A Portage to the Unknown
by Viscount Anarchy
Summary: A generic HP/SW crossover featuring Harry in the usual cliche profession and also featuring that random Twi'lek girl that everyone likes for some reason.
1. Chapter 1

There was nothing quite like the blackness of space. The feeling of floating endlessly without limits… it was a feeling that would never get old to Harry. To be truly independent was a great feeling. Though sometimes, there _was_ a need for fulfilment, to do _something_.

For Harry, fulfilment came in many forms. Sometimes it was merely the needs of the flesh, while other times it required something a bit more mentally stimulating. And of course, there was the fulfilment of his bank account. And, when you could get a few of those things at the same time, then that was something Harry was interested in.

His spaceship wasn't top of the line, but it was quite good. An Aggressor-class assault fighter, it was new-ish, and heavily customized, as is tradition amongst the guild. Harry liked it a lot, especially since one person could crew the ship by themselves, though there were additional crew cabins as well as a bunk room, and of course, cells for captives. Standard bounty hunter kit.

The captain's chair was pretty much the most comfortable thing ever, as required for someone whose primary means of wealth accumulation was to pilot the ship all across the galaxy. The consoles were within perfect distance of his hands, and the display was at the exact height so he didn't have to crane his neck. It had taken Harry a bit to get used to the idea of high-tech computers, given what he was as a wizard, but the existence of Jedi across the galaxy has necessitated a means in which to shield electronics from the Force, and thousands of years of innovation have made it not even remotely a problem.

Not having much else to do, and having an unscratchable and endless itch in the form of a need to adventure, Harry pulled up the bounty board through the holonet. There were a few different filters he could toggle to filter out the type of work he wanted, thanks to his veteran status in the bounty hunter's guild.

Being a veteran gave him access to some high-level contracts, though given that he worked solo and that those types of bounties tended towards mercenary work rather than detective work, he didn't take them too often. Instead, he accessed the local board. It wasn't a matter of seeing if there was anything, it was simply a matter of seeing if there was anything interesting.

In a galaxy where the population was in the quadrillions, there was always bounties. Some got snatched up quick, some managed to last for days, some were free for all, and some weren't. There was always the chance of running into another bounty hunter running the same job.

In the outer rim where he was currently, he had his pick of the lot. There was less law enforcement out here, so many had to resort to alternate means to accomplish what they needed to. There was a lot of money to be made for unscrupulous individuals.

There were all sorts of bounties available. Anything from a trade escort, to local nav mapping, to headhunting. A trade escort wasn't really Harry's speed. His ship, the Rowena's Revenge, wasn't a warship, though it did have enough armaments to do some serious damage. And that kind of job, more often than not, was outright boring in the instances where they didn't get ambushed.

Seeing as how the _Revenge_ wasn't equipped with the necessary sensor equipment to map unexplored systems, that really left Harry's only choice of headhunting, though that was the most common type of contract. It was actually a very diverse field, with pay scaling from pretty much nothing to enough to retire on, with jobs either focusing on the "alive" part of wanted dead or alive, or the "dead" part.

Harry had started out like everyone else, running on a crew making a few hundred credits per job, until he saved up enough to get his own junker of a vessel, so he could choose his own jobs, build up a name for himself, and not have to split the profits amongst his crew.

Right now, Harry still considered himself mid-level. He had a name amongst the Guild, but he was still relatively unknown and off-the-radar where it counted. And he didn't really want to get that much higher either, as that's when the big names came out to play. Going after a contract worth fifty thousand credits meant that pretty much anyone and everyone would be on it, all the bigs guns, perhaps even bring some people out of retirement. Harry wanted nothing to do with that kind of notoriety, so he tended to stick a tier or two below that. It was still great money, yet he wouldn't have a target on his head, and other guild members more or less respected when someone called dibs on a bounty of that level. It wasn't worth getting killed over two-thousand credits, but fifty thousand was enough to change someone's tune. It was enough to buy a new starship, and without a starship, you weren't anyone.

The Rowena's Revenge had cost nearly three-hundred thousand credits, so suffice to say, Harry has had a few successful jobs to his name. And he wanted to keep going. He liked working without a crew, but if he could get like minded people with the same vision, he would consider going bigger. An old corvette could be had for under a million credits, and would be the perfect sort of ship to run a crew out of, or even multiple crews. A mobile floating headquarters.

Such an endeavor was quite far away in the future though, but it always good to have goals.

Looking through some of the older contracts, a few potentials popped up to him. He quickly went through them, deciding on relevance and sorting them based on preference. There were tons nearby at Lola Sayu, but Harry wanted nothing to do with that place. There was a prison there that was specifically built to hold rogue Jedi, but it had been captured by the Separatists. Nothing good would come from even being in the same system as such a place. It wasn't the kind of place that was known to the public, but the Guild's database was quite extensive.

Harry quickly marked it off the list. Entering that system was the exact opposite of keeping a low profile. Plus, the system was quite hard to get to.

That left quite a few options at Lianna, which was a local shipping hub out there in the rim, which also meant a decent variety of jobs, though quite a high likelihood of stepping on others' toes. There was also a fair amount at both Galidraan and Felucia. It was the later of which that jumped out to him.

It was an older listing, nearly a week old, and the price offered had been escalating daily. It was clearly some sort of desperation involved, and as he read it, he realized why. The Felucians were pretty passive people, with the vast majority of them being farmers of some sort. They supplied quite a few words for the Republic, though there was a continual planetary hazard, so it wasn't exactly a vacation hotspot. They had been invaded more than once by the Separatists for their exports.

That wasn't what interested him, as that's not what the bounty was about. What did interest him, is that when push came to shove, the native Felucians would not just roll over, and could have a vindictive streak. Such as when a Felucian mayor's daughter got kidnapped for ransom by a crime lord, the mayor did not hesitate to put a price on the crime lord's head instead of crumbling to the blackmail.

It was as clear as day as to why no one had taken the bounty so far. Going after a crime lord was not something most bounty hunters would consider, as there was a tendency for that to be bad for their health, and long term prospects. Crime lords have long memories, and would not forget someone who slighted them. Harry wasn't deterred. It was the type of job that he'd likely look into even if there wasn't a monetary reward. As a personal rule, he wasn't a fan of kidnapping, not even for political reasons. If he could do the job and feel good about himself _and_ get paid, then that was all the more reason to look into it.

But first, he pulled up the data on the crime lord known as Helman Voosk. It was best to be aware of whom he was messing with before intervening. After all, morality or not, he wouldn't tangle with a major criminal syndicate for a mere 4,800 credits. Some of them had influence on multiple _sectors,_ let alone systems or planets.

Voosk was a bit more than a minor crime boss, but not by much. A decade past, there had been a turf war between him and a few other petty thugs, which he won. He then consolidated the remnants of the gang to form a decent sized criminal empire, with a couple dozen smuggling ships on his payroll, as well a security force that protected his estate on Felucia, though his actual whereabouts was not in the system. Criminals tend to not have their current location readily on file.

It sounded impressive up front, but Harry had seen his share of smuggling vessels, and in nearly all cases, they were junkers. There was no point in buying a shiny new spaceship for a hundred thousand credits when you could get one for a couple thousand that would serve just as well, and you wouldn't lose your ass on it when it inevitably gets impounded.

The real red-flag on this guy's importance was the fact that the bounty on him was only 4,800 credits. If he was a big deal, it would have been more. Not to mention the fact that this guy was extorting a mayor for a payday… that wasn't what crime lords in the the big leagues did. Extort galactic senators and embargo a planet yes, blackmail a mayor from an outer-rim planet, no.

With all that knowledge now firmly in Harry's mind, he clicked "accept" and immediately put in a call to the person who created the bounty, a Mayor Melos Miassis. The call beeped for nearly an uncomfortable amount of time before it finally went through. The holodisplay in front of Harry projected the mayor's image.

"This is Mayor Miassis," the mayor said. Felucians were interesting looking humanoids, with pink skin and an almost reptilian looking head. The mayor wore a blue hat with a triangular insignia on it.

"Bounty Hunter Potter," Harry replied. "Calling from the Rowena's Revenge. I've accepted your bounty on Helman Voosk. 4,800 alive, 3,600 dead, paid upon successful return of Alinna Miassis."

The mayor blinked in surprise and took a moment to collect himself. He briefly conferred with a datapad off to his right. "Yes, I see that you've accepted it," he said. "Thank you. I will transfer coordinates to your ship. I do not care if you burn his entire estate to the ground, but my daughter must be returned to me unharmed."

"Right," Harry said. "I do, however, still require more information. Information that might not necessarily be in my database. Troop strength, reasoning behind the kidnapping, things that will help me not get killed, if you get my meaning."

"Voosk is a thug with delusions of grandeur," the mayor snarled. His thick Felucian accent shone through his grasp of Galactic Basic. "He's blackmailing me, but not for money. He wishes for me to step down from my position, so he can insert himself as Mayor. I told him over my dead body, and then he took my daughter. If I don't get my daughter back soon, I may have to considered complying with his requests. This position is not worth my own child's life. She's all I got."

"I understand," Harry said sympathetically. "I'm a highly trained bounty hunter. This is what I do. Now, can you tell me anything about the resistance I can expect to face? Does he have any tanks? Gunships?"

"Voosk commands bullies and thugs," the Mayor said. "Very few of them have any actual training. They won't be heavily armed, but they will be armed. No gunships, but he does have anti-aircraft emplacements around his compound. Maybe a few walkers. His people are the kind that are very quick to resort to violence, even murder, but will fall apart at the first sign of their own lives being in danger. Their loyalty only goes so far as their paycheck."

"Got it," Harry said. "I've received the co-ordinates as well. I will return your daughter to you as soon as possible."

"Thank you," the Mayor said.

Harry closed the link and immediately set a course for Felucia. It was only a handful of systems away, but it would still take a few hours. In the outer-rim, outside of a few main trade routes, some of the hyperlanes could be quite perilous, especially when the Separatists or Republic were making heavy use of them. Luckily, the route to Felucia wasn't on one of the main hyperlanes directly, but that just meant he had to be a bit more careful in the corridor, as there would be more jumps. Space was _vast_ , so the chances of hitting anything was quite slim, but it was still quite dangerous.

With the course set, Harry engaged the drive and the _Revenge_ quickly built up speed. Once ready, he toggled the hyperdrive lever and set it to one. It took a moment to setting in as the light outside the ship blurred. Then, he clicked the lever once more to nought point five. At this speed, he risked not being able to respond to his proximity sensor in time if something were to get in front of his ship's course.

Being in space, let alone hyperspace, never failed to amaze Harry. Hyperspace was something completely different though. Moving faster than the speed of light was awe-inspiring, and he could see hundreds of streaks of different colored light go by, illuminating the cockpit. It was quite a sight... up until the point where the ship gets smashed by a gravity well and he got evaporated on a subatomic level. But, the collision would at least be beautiful.

With the autopilot on for a few minutes, Harry got about to preparing his gear. He had already decided on a stealth mission. There wasn't really any satisfaction to killing thugs, even if they deserved it, so he prefered to get in and get out. If possible. He always had a plan B though, in this case, his magic. Not to mention, his bounty only specified Voosk, so he always had to be careful about collateral damage.

The armory was at the back of the ship, near the engine room. It wasn't a big ship, so it wasn't actually that far of a walk, but the space was well-used. The armory wasn't large, but it contained three lockers on the far wall that held three suits. Most bounty hunters were quite identifiable by their signature getup, and Harry wasn't much different, except he tried to keep a low profile so people wouldn't recognize him on sight even when wearing a suit.

The suit on the far right would be the one he'd be using. It had a dual layer cloaking system, the first layer being a simple, yet expensive, personal cloaking unit, and the second being a more comprehensive invisibility enchantment built into the front armor plate. It was a light set of gear overall, with an composite mesh that would help reduce his heat signature, and it was also light enough to not restrict his movement.

Getting into the gear took some effort, as the latches for the shoulder straps had to be done with one hand, but Harry managed easily enough. He took his dual-action blaster out of it's charging cradle and hooked it into his holster. He hoped he wouldn't need it, but he always hoped that, and he always ended up using it. He then took his stun baton and hooked that to his other hip. It was strong enough to stun most living creatures, as well as short out various electronics. Lastly, he made sure his wand was still holstered to his wrist, and his spare attached to his inner thigh. He'd never go anywhere without them if he could help it.

Once Harry was all geared up, there wasn't much to do but wait, and have a cup of tea. It was kind of amazing the variety of tea one could find across the galaxy, and it was definitely one of the upsides to leaving Earth. That and just the beauty of it all.

Eventually, the _Revenge_ made it it to Felucia with no problems. And, if he did run into a problem, he could just activate the stealth systems and run. It hadn't happened yet, but the option was always there. He was just one bounty hunter amongst a guild of thousands, in a galaxy of quadrillions. There was no reason for him specifically to run into problems, though anything could happen

Felucia was a beautiful, but dangerous planet. Even from orbit, it was colorful, with a myriad of deep blues, reds and greens, but it was deceptive. The entire surface was either water or jungle, though the jungle could vary a bit such as jungle-swamps, or jungle-mountains. There was no getting away from it.

It was the jungle themselves that were dangerous. Most jungles on any planet were very dangerous, but the ones on Felucia were amongst the most dangerous in the entire galaxy. The plant life there grew at visible speeds, and could swallow an unattended ship whole in just a few days. To go along with such dangerous plantlife were the various toxins that every single plant gave off. Some were minorly harmful to humans, but other could be outright deadly within minutes, if not faster.

With such dangerous plantlife came just as dangerous animal life. They had to be, to survive the deadly jungles. Most notable perhaps were the jungle rancors, which were huge hulking beasts, as well as acklays, which could sever someone in half with their mantis-like appendages, armor and all. Most people who wandered into the jungle by accident never returned, and their bodies would never be found.

Despite this, the native population had managed well enough. There were small cities around the planet, and a functioning society, though most of the population inhabited smaller villages in clearings throughout the world. They had even managed to tame the land enough to where their primary profession was farming.

As such, the Felucians themselves weren't really of any consequence. The planet, however, was rich in resources, many of which were rare and only found on Felucia. Those business that thrived in rare exports could really make bank. It was for this reason, Felucia had found itself occupied at various times through the war by both sides, and several battles had left the planet scarred.

Approaching Felucia, Harry noticed that the planet was still in a state of conflict. In the southern hemisphere, he could see several Republic warships in orbit, though they didn't seem to be in battle currently. There were a couple of distinctive Venator-class star destroyers, a staple of the Republic army, as well as a single Acclamator-class assault ship.

On the far side of the planet, Harry detected three Separatist dreadnoughts floating in space, not doing anything. Harry had no idea if they were waiting for reinforcements or what, but he was suddenly getting a bad feeling. He didn't want to be anywhere near a warzone, but he had already agreed to the job.

The one small annoyance was that Felucia didn't have any real space infrastructure in place. They did not build starships, or have commercial fueling depots. There were just a handful of docks groundside near the major cities, and most businesses had private ones, though most of those businesses were foreign.

The coordinates of Voosk's compound lead him away from the Felucian heartland and to the southern jungles. Civilization was few and farther between down there, with the only real breaks in the landscape coming from large industrial compounds. All things considered, Felucia was a pretty good place for a remote company headquarters, if only because no one went to Felucia who didn't have to go. It was a beautiful place, but far too hazardous.

Harry made sure to enable the _Revenge's_ stealth long before he got anywhere near the compound. Usually, ships could not stay stealth for long, as heat build up could become a problem, but judicial use of magic had amplified his ships heatsink capabilities a hundred-fold. And if that wasn't enough, he could just outright enable the invisibility booster. _That_ led to all sorts of other potential issues though, so he tried to not rely on it.

Voosk's compound was in the middle of the jungle, like Harry expected. Then again, nearly everywhere could be described as "the middle of the jungle." But it was exceptionally true for Voosk. The nearest town was Mayor Miassis's, a hundred kilometers away. And beyond that, there was no one else.

The compound itself was well guarded. Voosk's gang was made up of several different races, including Humans, Aqualish and other expected species typically found in a criminal enterprise. There was even a Sugi patrolling the walls and occasionally using a flamethrower to clear encroaching plantlife. Voosk himself was Felucian, but it made sense that a gang with an offworld presence would be made up of outside species. What Harry didn't see were droids, and that was a good thing. Perhaps the Felucian environment wasn't good for their circuitry.

The compound wasn't large. In fact, Harry would go so far as to say it was smaller than he was expecting, and a bit ramshackle. It clearly wasn't a high-profile operation, though Harry knew looks could be deceiving. Even with daily maintenance, buildings could quickly wear down on Felucia.

There was a series of hangars covered with camouflage to help maintain the smuggling fleet, and probably a few other ships. They mayor had said that Voosk didn't have any air support, but Harry knew from experience that they would likely have something. One couldn't maintain a fleet of smuggling ships without having some way to protect them in local orbit.

Overall, the whole operation reminded Harry a bit of a drug plantation. There were armed guards, mysterious buildings and a remote forest. Add in the blackmail and kidnapping, and it fit the description of a cartel to a T. Harry would not be surprised if they were smuggling drugs either - Mayor Miassis hadn't specified, and he hadn't asked.

Once Harry categorized the potential entrances and escape routes, Harry piloted the _Revenge_ a fair distance away, out of range of their local sensors. It would not do to have his cover blown before he even started. Being in stealth was not a catch-all.

Finding a clear enough area to actually land the ship was a bit difficult, but after a few minutes of searching Harry managed to find one. The ground was a bit swampy, but he was confident his ship wouldn't be swallowed in a couple of hours.

As for the plant life and any other intruders… that took some special precautions. Precautions that weren't available to most other people.

The first thing Harry did was put a bubblehead charm on himself. The air on the planet was technically breathable for humans, but that really only applied outside of the jungle. Inside, it was hit or miss. The jungle itself was critical for the recycling of the air, but at the same time, there were a ton of dangerous spores and the like, stuff Harry really didn't want to breathe in.

A little bit of magic also went a long way in making sure Harry still had a ride off the dangerous planet. Once parked on the ground, he got out and began tracing a circle on the ground around the ship. It didn't have to be a perfect circle, it didn't even have to be a circle at all. It was just where he wanted the boundary for his spell to extend out to, and having a physical representation, even a temporary one, made the spell easier than visualizing it all in his head. Incantation, wand movements, even the wand itself, were all components in a spell that made it easier to cast the more of them that were used.

Once satisfied, Harry began loading the area up with magic. It was a practice he had done many times in the past, whenever he had to park on a planet without using a docking hangar. Sometimes he had to keep a low profile and leave no trail that he was there. Sometimes he simply had to go undetected by his target. Other times, it's simply because there was no other option.

He had a spell to stop encroachment, another to stabilize the ground the ship was on, a second one to hinder plant growth, one more to prevent animals from crossing, and a third to further inhibit plant life. It was critical to make sure nothing got into the ship or affected it in any way. The end result was a layer of spells that nearly created a stasis field inside, as well as keeping all sorts of monsters out. Most of it was spells he had learned back in Herbology during his formative years. It wasn't perfect, and couldn't be without a significantly larger amount of time put into the effort, but it would do for a few hours.

The trek through the Felucian jungle towards to Voosk compound was a bit more intense than he had hoped, but such came with the nature of accepting a job on Felucia. He'd deal. It was a long trek, but getting out would be much easier.

The outside of the compound wasn't nearly as impressive as Harry thought when he has seen it from the air, and he hadn't been impressed at all then. The fence was more like a rampart, with a platform for guards to patrol on. It wasn't terribly high, though higher than his eyeline. It seemed to be made out of some sort of durable metal, though the paint had long faded and it seemed to be corroding in places. Every dozen feet or so there was a flamethrower mounted on a gimbal to combat the living jungle, as well as a flamebar at the bottom of each wall, which was little more than tubing with holes every few inches that spat out flames when activated.

It was a crude method of keeping the jungle at bay, but effective.

There wasn't an actual way into the base at ground level. The fence was an enclosure, the outer boundary. There was no reason to go into the jungle, so there wasn't a gate. It's not like there were roads and vehicles to drive on them. The only way in or out of the base was by air. Or by Harry simply jumping over the fence.

It was a basic technique, one of the first that the Jedi taught their younglings. Harry wasn't a Jedi, but they all used the same thing. Harry and hundreds of other planets called it magic, while the Jedi called it the Force. Either way, with it, Harry had used it to make himself invisible, and then used it again to bound over the outside wall, a good fifteen foot leap. He landed on the walkway with barely a sound.

Pausing, Harry tensed to see if he had tripped any alarms. He started moving again five seconds later, taking in a headcount as he did so. There were ten or so guards patrolling the wall, though Harry would use the word "patrol" loosely. They walked around and had fun shooting at animals that got to close to the wall, and overall, did very little patrolling.

Harry hopped down off the wall and made his way to the inner buildings. From the outside, most of them looked identical, and even of the ones that weren't, he had no idea which one was the one he wanted.

There was nothing for it other than to check each building. The captive would likely be in some sort of holding cell or a fortified room, and there would be guards on her door at all times. That meant it was unlikely she was in the hangar, which was the largest building.

Excluding the hangar, there were around twenty buildings. A pair of them were some sort of growhouse, judging by the transparent panelling and artificial lighting, and nearly naked workers. Harry quickly ruled that one as well, without having entered it. Harry didn't know exactly what was going on in there, and he really didn't want to find out.

Moving around the base was a bit tricky. There were quite a few foot patrols and it was a bit more busy that Harry had been expecting. There were well-armed, which meant that Voosk's operation was a little bit bigger than he had been told. But still nothing he was too worried about. The mayor's intel was likely a bit old, and he probably didn't have deep contacts.

The inner buildings were all of a roughly similar layout. Generic, quickly buildable, and made somewhere offworld. He's seen them a hundred times. A quick charm and Harry was able to walk _through_ the wall, while remaining invisible. It was rarely a useful spell, but the walls on this type of modular building were thin, and did not contain anything that would inhibit him, such as wires.

The first building he went through was as generic and boring as they came. It was a food storehouse, full of food that would keep for months, if not years, even in the Felucian jungle. That in itself wasn't interesting, but what was were the sensors mounted up in the corner of the building. Video and audio, that was it. Not that he was disappointed, but that was pretty standard. Thermal sensors were only ever standard issue on far more complex operations, or usually enabled when an alarm actually got tripped. What Harry also noticed was that there was no fire suppression system. He filed that nugget of information away for future use, if necessary.

Moving on, Harry popped out of the building the same way he had entered, removed the charm, and then added it to the next building, and repeated the process. Walking through the wall was a very odd sensation, and Harry always half-wondered if that's what it felt like to be a ghost. He hoped he'd never learn the answer to that.

Harry was a bit of an adrenaline junkie, and walking into a blind room was always a bit of a risk. For as easy as it was to use magic to break into a non-magical building, it was still quite exciting. Still, easy was good, easy meant easy credits, but part of him just wanted something to go wrong just so he had a reason to let loose. Sometimes, it was almost _too_ easy, and that was always a bit worrying.

There were a few bunk houses, a shower complex, a mess hall, a lounge, and an officers quarters. It wasn't until he got to the officer's quarters that he noticed something was amiss, and that was that there were no other buildings. That's when he realized that that particular building had a sublevel.

A quick use of a revealing spell told him that the sublevel was similar enough to an actual building that he wouldn't be able to sneak through the ceiling. It was made of some variant of duracrete, and had the typical piping and wiring that one would expect in a city house. Ghosting in through a live wire was a good way to get killed.

The entrance wasn't hidden and it wasn't guarded, but it was secured with a heavy door. Luckily, there was a decent amount of traffic coming and going, so all he had to do was follow someone else through the door without making too much noise

The subfloor was _much_ bigger than Harry had realized on first glance. It seemed to cover at least half of the complex and go under many of the other building. It was just as well guarded as well, with an almost constant influx of men coming and going. There wasn't any higher level of security, such as an eye scanner, or even a dna scanner, but the constant presence of guards meant it would be hard to sneak in without being noticed. It was a drug smuggling outfit, not a high-tech wetware cloning facility, so Harry wasn't terribly surprised with the situation.

The hallways were annoyingly cramped, which combined with the high amount of traffic, made it quite difficult for Harry to sneak in. He had to take it slow. Checking each individual room was annoying as well, since he had to be very careful with the one-way transparency charm he used to look through the walls without entering.

Most of the rooms seemed to be where officers slept, but a few had more nefarious purposes. There was one that seemed like a torture room, and another which was a pleasure room, thankfully not in use. Though, now that Harry thought about it, they both could have been pleasure rooms.

Going past the pleasure rooms, Harry turned a corner and walked nearly right into two hulking Aqualish men. They walked side by side down the hallway, talking in low tones, and if Harry hadn't dispelled his bubblehead charm upon entering the building, he would have bumped into them.

As soon as the two Aqualish men passed, Harry got off the wall and let go of a breath. Immediately they paused.

"Did you hear that?" the first one asked. He had a thin reedy voice that belied his tusked face.

"Yeah," the second one said. He was the bigger of the two and had a second set of eyes, unlike the other one. "Sounded like air."

"Sounded like someone breathing."

"Could be the ventilation. You know how this place is."

"Yeah. I hate this place. Can't get out of here fast enough. Boss has me for a half a ton to Arda."

"That's not an easy route," the other commented. "Better you than me. I'm tagged for Voss."

"Ah. The miners eat the shit up…"

The voices trailed off and Harry let go of a second sigh of relief. That had been too close. He had to be more careful. Some species had better hearing than humans, and most had much better smell. Magic could only help so far, and when motion is added, it was almost impossible.

As Harry continued down the hallway, dodging the occasional thug, things seemed to be getting nicer. The walls were cleaner, the lighters were brighter. The men walked with straighter backs. Harry knew he was close.

Moments later, Harry came across a room with a heavy door, similar to the one at the beginning of the hallway. It was open, and inside Harry saw a Felucian who could be no one other than Voosk. He was currently talking with one of his underlings about some task. It was a strange dynamic. Voosk couldn't have been more than four feet tall, and his voice was not intimidating at all. Yet he commanded the far taller and larger human with authority.

Harry snuck behind the man, paying extra attention to not bump into any of the assortment of random devices that were scattered around. Harry wasn't sure what half of them were, but he'd guess some sort of antiquated filtration system off an old cruiser.

Behind Voosk were four doors, just as heavy as the one that lead to Voosk's office. A cursory inspection revealed that one lead to Voosk's personal chambers, another was a long passage that lead somewhere, perhaps even outside the complex, and the other two were cells. One of them was occupied with a Felucian who bore a striking resemblance to Mayor Miassis. Though, to be fair, Harry couldn't tell any Felucians apart, not even their gender, without hearing their voice. She could have been anyone's daughter, but the context of his mission almost certainly meant she was the mayor's daughter.

The cell was small and cramped, even for a Felucian, but it had a small cot and a waste bucket. Harry had seen worse conditions, had been in worse conditions. Thankfully, the other cell was empty. He liked his missions to have as few complications as possible, and a second prisoner would have complicated things.

Once Harry determined the captive was not in any immediate danger, Harry turned back around to face Voosk, and waited. For someone from such a passive species, the man sure liked to talk quite a bit about his criminal enterprise.

Harry felt like he waited fifteen minutes before Voosk finally dismissed the man. As soon as Voosk was by himself, he used his stun baton to stun the man, and then quickly shut the heavy door to the office. It closed with a heavy thump that shook the room.

Then, he turned around and addressed the Felucian girl.

"I'm here to rescue you," Harry said. "Your father hired me. Try to not make any noise, and close your eyes. My ship is right outside."

The Felucian made a squeak in surprise upon hearing his disembodied voice, but he paid her little mind. Instead, he focused on the door to the cell. A simple _alohamora_ didn't do anything, which indicated a more complex, shielded electronic locking system.

With time of the essence, Harry quickly accessed Voosk's terminal at his desk, which was conveniently open. He scrolled through the options wantonly, finding a few choice ones worth sabotaging. The first casualty was the anti-aircraft system, which would perpetually be stuck in maintenance mode for the next three days. He hadn't even _seen_ an anti-aircraft system, but he was glad it was now disable. The final measure was to lock the main office door, and unlock the one on the Felucian girl's cell.

Once that was done, Harry turned back around to the Felucian girl, who had dutifully covered her eyes with her hands. Harry tossed Voosk over one shoulder, and grabbed the girl by the hand, and with a brief thought, apparated them straight out of the room and right inside his ship.

Mission complete.

The mission run time was just a bit under two hours. The original hike to the base had taken a bit of time, as had inspecting every single building. His ship was still perfectly fine, the preventive measures still in place. Nothing had even come near it. As expecting, getting in to the base was much harder than getting out. That was the nature when having the ability to teleport, but only to a place he knew well.

"We're there," Harry said to the Felucian. He had already forgotten her name. "You're safe now. We're going to take a quick trip over to your father's."

She squeaked in surprise but didn't let go of Harry's hand.

Harry dumped Voosk into a holding cell while the little Felucian looked on in morbid curiosity. Harry then beckoned the girl to follow him up into the cockpit, where he patted the co-pilot's seat. "You can sit here," he said. She seemed to understand Basic well enough, and took a seat while staring around at the controls in fascination. She had probably never been on a starship before. Harry had a similar look once upon a time.

Powering up the ship took a moment, and a few seconds later, they were up in the air. Retracting the landing gear, Harry immediately set a course for the mayor's location. While doing so, he updated the Bounty Hunter's log to indicate that Voosk was in captivity, and the daughter was safe. Harry only dropped out of stealth when he was many kilometers away from Voosk's compound. He briefly wondered how long it would be for them to realize that Voosk was no longer there, and how long it would be for someone else to step up and take over his spot. Hopefully the mayor had enough influence to call in an actual dispatch to take the operation out. The Felucians didn't have much of a police force, but they had enough.

The Rowena's Revenge was quite fast, even at sub-light speeds. It didn't take more than five minutes to take off, fly a hundred kilometers, and arrive at the destination.

The Mayor's town was fairly large, but it was still a town. It did, however, have an actual dock, and a brief exchange with the control tower had him express rushed into it. Getting a priority docking was always nice for Harry. It made things simpler.

Once docked, Harry lowered the ramp with the press of a button. He took the girl's hand and led her down it, right into the Mayor's arms who had arrived immediately upon hearing that he was docking. He lifted her up in his arms and spun her around, speaking to her in fast paced Felucian, which Harry didn't understand.

After a minute, he turned back to Harry. "Thank you for returning the gem of my life to me," he said. There were tears in his eyes. "A million credits wouldn't be enough to pay you, but I will pay you the agreed upon fee."

"What do you want me to do with the prisoner?" Harry asked. "I've got him in a cell right now."

Mayor Miassis nodded and let out a loud whistle. Several guards immediately came forward. "We'll take him into holding," the mayor said.

"Good enough for me," Harry said. "Though, I will say, I disabled the defenses around the compound. It might be a few days before they re-establish themselves, so if you wish to get rid of a thorn in your side, now is as good of a time to do it as you're going to get."

"Oh, I intend to do that, and so much more," the Mayor said. "I will teach the criminal scum what it is like to threaten my family. I will make sure that no such incident ever happens again."

"Good, good," Harry said. Upon going back up into his ship and releasing Voosk into their custody, he checked a datapad and noted that the funds had been transferred into his count. He then returned to the mayor.

"It looks like the payment has gone through," Harry said. "It was good doing business with you."

"And you too," the Mayor said. He held out one long, three finger hand, and Harry shook it. "Safe travels."

Harry boarded his ship without looking back, and closed the ramp. In the grand scheme of things, 4,800 wasn't a lot of credits. But, if he could earn that much a day for an entire year, he'd have nearly two million credits. Enough to buy a capital ship, assuming, of course, that credits were still worth something if the war ever came to an end. And that didn't seem to be anytime soon. He could still see the warships in orbit, though thankful they weren't in battle. He wanted to be far away from the system when _that_ started.

Pondering that thought, Harry took the helm and disengaged from local traffic control and lifted off. Once in orbit, he immediately started looking for the next job. It was never too early to start planning for his next meal.

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTES:**

This is what I worked on for NaNoWriMo. 50k words in 1 month. The end result was about over 8 chapters which are a bit less polished than I had hoped. So with that in mind, I am looking for feedback. Grammar and spelling is always a plus. If you think the chapter is boring (very likely, given my writing style), a bit wordy at times, or perhaps something is not explained enough or outright wrong with what we know of SW canon, feel free to drop a message. I'm a firm believer in constructive feedback.

Similar to my other stories, this is my attempt at normalizing what we tend to see in HP/SW crossovers... whatever normalizing means. No Jedi bashing, no multi-thousand word introspection from every single character every time Harry casts a spell that defies everything everyone knows, no Harry being the one random guy that just happens to have every answer to every problem and single handedly wins the war for him and his allies just because they happened to run into him at the right time in the right spot.


	2. Chapter 2

Once in the comfort of his own ship, Harry began going through the four steps to his post-bounty ritual. It wasn't a ritual in the magical sense, so perhaps calling it a routine would be more appropriate. But it wasn't really a routine either, since it wasn't something he did out of habit. He did it just because it made sense.

Getting out of his armor was alway a bit tough, but it was always the first step. The mission was over, and now he was in the comfort and protection of his own ship, so there was no reason to wear it anymore.

Shrugging out of the armor after it was unlatched, he gently laid it on the assembly desk in the armory. Using his wand to clean it wasn't a huge issue, but it was necessary. Even a few hours in the Felucian jungle was enough to accumulate more gunk than he was comfortable with, but a handful of quick spells restored the armor back to its previous clean condition.

Once satisfied, Harry hung the armor back up in its locker for the next use. Even on a ship by himself, being tidy was vital. In addition to cleaning the armor, he quickly jumped into the sonic shower in his cabin. While he could have used magic to clean himself like he had his armor, it really just didn't feel the same. There was a difference between looking visually clean, and actually _being_ clean. Harry didn't know if it was a simple mental thing, but he felt much better after using a physical shower.

It was simple, yet effective, and no magic needed. The simpler things were, whether it was in a mission, or just common day-to-day activities, the less chance there was for things to go wrong. In his life, simplicity was a luxury that he tried to indulge himself in as much as possible.

Underneath the mess hall, there was a short storage corridor that ran the length of the ship. Harry mostly kept things under there that he didn't need to access on a day-to-day basis. Mostly raw materials like his potion ingredients and wand woods from around the galaxy and the the equipment to craft them with, but there were also spares parts for his ship.

However, the most important part on the entire ship was hidden under a panel there - the heart of the Rowena's Revenge's magical protections.

Pulling the panel off, Harry placed his hands on the silvery metal orb that was hidden there. To the naked eye, the orb appeared perfectly smooth except for some nearly-microscoping pin points that were on the top, and the orb seemed to be connected to some sort of metal that disappeared inside the walls and connected to all the various systems on the ship.

With his hand on the orb, Harry steadied himself and closed his eyes. The orb acted in much the same way a wand did, as a focus. But it wasn't a simple spell, it was something much more complicated.

The nature of magic was always an interesting topic, one that Harry mostly left to the people smarter than himself. It was quite amazing what the people on Earth had deduced as compared to what the people in the greater galaxy had discovered, and somewhere down the lines someone had coined the term "the Force" and it had stuck.

What Harry had learned, was that while magic mostly ignored the laws of the physics, there were some universal truths. The most important was that what some spells could in theory last for an indefinite amount of time, that was only true given no outside influences. The issue of course, was that there was always outside interference. A "permanent" sticking charm wasn't actually permanent and an "unbreakability" charm wasn't actually unbreakable.

It partially came down to the ambiguous naming of those spells, and there were many other spells like those, but the truth was not absolute. The charm could make the object it was on unbreakable, but the charm itself was not unbreakable. It could be an extremely well-made charm, making it extremely difficult to dispel, but not impossible.

The truth was that magic followed _some_ of the same laws of the universe as everything else. Entropy existed, and time was the great destroyer of all things. Magic degraded with time, because time introduced outside influences, whether it was simply cosmic radiation, or the heat of a star. An enchantment could fail in a month, or it could last for ten-thousand years, but at some point it would fail.

Unless, it was maintained.

That was the key. That's why the protections at Hogwarts had lasted so long, some of them since the school's founding a thousand years earlier. It's why Harry had to return to the Dursley's every summer when he was younger. It's why he was very cautious and tried to refresh the magic on his ship at least once a month.

After a moment, Harry's palm began to bleed onto the orb. The blood flowed down the orb in dark crimson rivulets, following shallow grooves in the metal that had not been visible before. The blood pooled at the bottom before disappearing into the metal itself, as if it had absorbed it.

There was a slight pull on Harry's magic as if the orb was leeching off him. He winced and pulled his hand away, slightly unsettled from the feeling. After all this time it was still a bit uncomfortable, though he he had learned to accept it as a small consequence.

Harry stood up from his squatting position in front of the orb and had to steady himself by placing a hand on the wall. The wound on his palm had healed itself nearly immediately, but he was still slightly dizzy from the exertion.

He replaced the cover on the wall, satisfied that the ship would be at max readiness for the next couple of weeks. All he needed now was step three of his usual routine, which was just a cup of tea and a snack. Blood magic tended to make him hungry, but so too did bounty hunting.

Harry didn't use magic to make his tea, nor did he use it to shower himself or turn the ship into a giant mansion using spatial expansion charms. If that sort of charm was to fail while going at hyperspeed, he would be atomized. It was better to be safe than sorry. All because magic _could_ replicate something, doesn't mean it should.

His survival was of utmost importance, and all of the enchantments through the ship were geared as such. The only exception, and it wasn't really an exception, was the hyperdrive engine.

Stock, an Aggressor-class assault fighter had a two-point-zero rated hyperdrive engine. The Rowena's Revenge wasn't stock though, and had a one-point-zero hyperdrive engine. It still wasn't all that special, though some interior space had to be sacrificed for the increased capacity. Even that wasn't enough though, so with Harry's magic, he could get it to approximately a nought-point-five rating, or perhaps even faster. He hadn't actually tested how fast he could get it to go, as there were few ships that could exceed that rating.

Some of the issues with increasing hyperdrive capacity were the power requirement, the heat output, and the fuel consumption. Fixing any one of those individually was not too much of an issue, other than the cascading effect. If one thing got modified, many other things had to get modified as well, and where he had only started with one single spell, now he had an entire network of magic dedicated to support it. The end result was well worth it, as he'd be able to go faster than anyone chasing him down. It just meant that he didn't want to risk an unneeded finicky spatial expansion charm accidentally failing because it didn't mix well with the charm making sure the engines didn't overheat, or the charms on the hull that made sure the ship didn't disintegrate under the increased stress.

Shields and weapons were the other major improvements he used his magic on, that and the hull itself. Impenetrable armor didn't actually mean as such, but it still meant that his ship's hull was much stronger than normal, though by no means would it stand up to a capital ships' armaments. Theoretically, the ship could survive just long enough to get the hell out of there, though that was a theory Harry never wanted to test.

As for the weapons, they were factory-modified, as most bounty hunter's modifying their ships were inclined to do. Other than that, his magic allowed them to draw more power and be far more powerful than normal, which was always a good thing, but with only four turrets the ship still wasn't exactly a warship. It was meant as a deterrent more than anything.

Relaxing into the pilot's seat with a cup of tea and a piece of fruit, Harry began the last step which was finding the next bounty. It was never too early to start looking for the next payday, even if it lead him across the galaxy, though he usually tried to find multiple jobs in the same sector so he didn't have to travel too far. Travel time was the most time consuming part of the hunt.

Immediately, Harry noticed that his bounty hunter score had increased. Mayor Miassis had marked the bounty as complete from his end, and now Harry was only two more bounties away from hitting the next milestone. _That_ was exciting. Two or three bounties a week for _years_ really added up.

Harry was looking forward to being on the next tier, as not many bounty hunter's made it that far. It was a tier that many of the big names had claimed as their own, names such as Jango Fett and Cad Bane. Harry wasn't really sure what the perks were, though he assumed that it would include increased discounts and full access to the guild's databases. Harry knew there was _more_ , but the bounty hunters who made it to that tier were notoriously tight-lipped, and Harry always prefered to keep a low profile.

As Harry pulled up the bounty board to look for the next job, he started to get an uneasy feeling. A shiver ran down the back of his spine. Something was off, and he couldn't quite place it. It felt _wrong_ , very very _wrong._

The final security measure on his ship was a magical shroud, used to hide his magical presence from others like him, whether it was Jedi, or even other Force-using bounty hunters, of which there are several. The shroud wasn't impenetrable by any means, as a significantly powerful spell would light his position up like a beacon, but any spell he was likely to use on a daily basis would be hidden just fine.

But, there was something off in the galaxy at large. When Harry had first entered the galactic community, he hadn't noticed it immediately, but then it began to sink in. It was a greasy, dirty, _dark_ feeling, a presence he felt at all times. A malicious force out there, all encompassing, like a cloud of ink. With time, Harry learned to ignore the feeling and go on with life, but he knew that whatever was generating that murkiness and clouding the entire galaxy like that was very powerful, and certainly didn't have any good intentions.

The feeling itself didn't mean anything. It wasn't an actual spell, but it did create some adverse side-effects. Divination was murky at best, and all attempts at scrying ended in failure, as if the effect was actively blocking it. That lead Harry to believe that whoever was doing it was doing it to hide their presence. That meant evil was afoot. An evil that could affect magic on a galactic scale was not something Harry was equipped to deal with, not without more information, so he relied on things like his shroud to keep hidden.

And now… something was changing. The darkness was not always completely encompassing. With proper preparation and concentration, he could pierce through the veil. He knew there were others out there like him. He could feel them, thousands of them. The Jedi, and some others. They had a presence, and could be felt with the proper technique. Occlumency worked well in that regards.

One by one, their presences in the galaxy suddenly disappeared, like a rubber-band snapping on his psyche. He could feel the Jedi dying off, their sudden absence creating a void that had once been filled with life. Each one was a psychic blow to his mind, which was now in turmoil. He winced as the life forces died off in droves. Dozens at first, then hundreds.

Harry froze in shock. Within minutes, a thousand Jedi were just _gone_. The darkness in the Force seem to expand, revelling in the disturbance. He could almost visualize the psychic screams as they shrieked on a metaphysical level. Harry had never felt anything like it, not on that scale.

Wiping away the tears Harry hadn't realized he shed, he shakily examined the sensors on his ship and scanned around Felucia. Both the Separatist and Republic warships were now moving, but did not appear to be moving towards _him_. That was good, and bad. It didn't seem like he was a target.

Concentrating on the darkness clouding his mind, Harry focused on the local Jedi that had been present on the planet. He had felt them when he arrived, but he usually didn't pay them any heed. They were always doing one mission or another.

There had been thousands of Jedi across the Galaxy. Six of them had been on Felucia, but now he could only feel three. Fifteen seconds later, another was gone and it was down to two. Harry reeled from the feeling, and it took extreme strength of mind to stop himself from throwing up.

Immediately, Harry made a decision. He turned the bounty panel away and hastily took up the ship's controls and accelerated swiftly forward. No sooner had he started his ship then another one of the Jedi died, and Harry winced. That one had been close.

Jamming the accelerator forward, the Rowena's Revenge lurched into speed far beyond what a standard Aggressor-class assault fighter could go in orbit. He urged the ship to go even faster, using all of the power available in the systems he had just refreshed a handful of minutes ago. If he could even save a single person, it would be worth it.

The last remaining life force came upon him quick and Harry registered the scene as fast as he could. There were roughly a hundred clone troopers as well as a dozen or so ground assault vehicles, a few of which were already smoking and destroyed. Blaster fire laced through the air as they tried to hit a fast moving target, the Jedi in question, who spun through the air like a top striking down several clone troopers, both with her twin lightsabers, as well as deflected blaster bolts. There was a small pile of bodies around the Jedi, but still scores of soldiers firing.

Whoever it was was far outnumbered and likely wouldn't last much longer, though they were making a good effort out of it. The sheer numbers would prevail, as they often did. It was a miracle that the Jedi had lasted this long, as so many had already fallen that Harry could barely feel more than a handful now in the entire galaxy, where once there had been thousands.

Harry slowed the ship down, and once it was below a certain threshold, he flicked open the ground facing weaponry and opened fire, first aiming for the mechanized gear. He barely even bothered to aim as he wantonly strafed the tanks and clone troopers alike, killing everyone that entered his crosshairs.

The surprise aerial assault caught them all off guard, and he manage to punch his blasters straight through several of the tanks before their escorts had so much as glanced in his direction. And when they had finally turned their sights on him, their attacks dissipated harmlessly off his ship. Personal blasters weren't much of a threat, and there weren't enough heavies on the ground to do a significant amount of damage.

It was brutal, quick and decisive. Within minutes, Harry had destroyed the majority of the clone battalion. Even with the hostile Felucian jungle providing some cover, there was not much a ground soldier could do in the face of a starship firing on them.

After spending a few more minutes picking off the remaining stragglers and making sure the AT-TEs' and SPHA's were truly destroyed, he landed the ship. He hadn't planned on returning to Felucia so soon, but here he was.

The Jedi had been tagged at some point during the battle and had fallen, but had not died. Harry had felt the life force falter, but not fade. They must have gotten hit by a stray blaster bolt and took cover while he strafed the battalion.

Carefully, Harry observed his scanning display, which showed no immediate activity in the close radius. Looking up at the horizon, it did not seem like the warships were moving towards his position, which was good. His ship was decked out, but he didn't want to test how well it would stand up to turbolaser fire. Those Venators would likely annihilate him.

Once Harry was sufficiently convinced that it was safe, at least for the moment, he lowered the ramp and spun his chair around and walked out onto the surface of the planet after applying the bubble-head charm once more. He'd still not risk the dubious air-quality of Felucia, not even in the heat of the moment.

"It's safe to come out now, Jedi," Harry called out. There was no immediate answer, though Harry hadn't been expecting one.

With caution, Harry approached the cluster of boulders that the Jedi had sought cover behind. The reason for the Jedi not responding was apparent, as she was unconscious and badly injured from a blaster shot to the back of the shoulder. Her blue skin was charred and raw. It was a mess.

Harry wasn't overly familiar with the roster of Jedi, but he actually knew who this one was. It was hard to mistake her. She had the exotic blue skin of a Rutian Twi'Lek, and the unparalleled beauty that her species was known for. She was Aayla Secura, Jedi Master and General, the hero of many battles, and one of the figureheads of the Republic Army.

She was heavily injured though, having been hit by a powerful blaster bolt. That she was alive at all was amazing, as a single hit was usually fatal. She wouldn't be alive for long though if she didn't get help. Plasma burns were no joke.

Something had happened here, but Harry wasn't sure what. It appeared clone troopers had turned on the Jedi generals, perhaps across the entire galaxy, and Harry couldn't even fathom why. Still, it was clear that it was best to not linger. The warships were still moving in orbit.

With a wave of his wand, Harry froze the wounded Jedi in place so she wouldn't aggravate her wounds, and then levitated her into the air. A second wave levitated her lightsabers off the ground from where they had fallen. Carefully, he pulled her into the _Revenge_ and set her down in the small medical bay. He took the lightsabers and locked them into a drawer with a quick charm.

"You've got a patient, doc," Harry called out as he removed the spells from her. A droid chirped into life and began whirring about, immediately running scans. While the droid worked, Harry got back into the cockpit and pulled up the ramp, before quickly engaging the engine and lifting off. He needed to get off the planet _immediately._

Getting found at the scene of a slaughter was not something he wanted to do. Getting caught red-handed was a sure-fire way to reduce his expected lifespan, and bounty hunters already had a extremely small average lifespan to begin with. It was the risk of the job, but this was a huge risk. Harry wasn't even sure if he had done the right thing. He hadn't had enough information, yet he had just taken drastic action. He had just killed dozens of soldiers to save one Jedi, but from the way the war had gone, Harry knew that one Jedi could be worth hundreds.

It took a few minutes to get the ship into orbit and far away from the battleground. He didn't want to go into hyperspace yet, not without knowing where he was going. Ideally, having an active bounty would give him direction, but that could wait for a few hours, at least until he knew what was going on, and where he should drop the Jedi off.

Once the ship was safely in orbit and out of visual sight of the typical entrypoint from the nearby hyperlane, Harry anchored down and went back to the medical bay. The ship would be ready to depart at a moment's notice.

The Jedi hadn't woken up, which was both good and bad. It was good, because that meant there wouldn't be a confused Jedi on the ship lashing out at him from being in an unknown environment after having just been betrayed. And it was bad, because that meant the injuries were serious.

The droid was doing good work, but it wasn't a specialized trauma droid like those found on large troop transports or in actual hospitals. However, it was good at general emergency triage and common medical problems. It had identified the injuries and had got to work using severe-level protocols. She was in rough shape.

Harry kept the medical bay well stocked in the event that he couldn't treat himself. Or, in case someone else needed a speedy recovery, there was always extreme measures. There wasn't enough room for a Bacta tank and all of the equipment needed to keep one running, but he had something just as good - magic. More specifically, potions.

There were a lot of ways that magic could be used to greater effect than what technology could do, but Bacta was a technological miracle. It was also bloody expensive, and a bit finicky. The magical potions Harry had on stock that could be used to a similar effect were no less complicated, or expensive. The ingredients required were scattered across the entire galaxy and cost a fortune due to their rarity. Regardless, they were nearly invaluable to Harry, but due to how limited the supply was, he couldn't use them carelessly.

While he wouldn't use them for any random scratch or bruise, Harry felt in this instance that they were quite warranted. The war was at a critical junction, and time was of the essence, so he lifted the medical lockout on his potions supply and got to work. He could get the medical droid to use some of the potions, but this wasn't one of them.

Most of the healing Harry had learned had been learned through trial and error, and in the field. But, there were always two steps after the diagnosis. He used his wand for the minor injuries, which mostly was just the flash burns from the blaster shot. The wound itself was caused by superheated plasma, and that's where the potion was useful. A mere spell was not enough to heal such a complex injury, but the potion would be.

The vial was small, but each one was enough to renew the flesh, muscle and nerves of a single injury. A larger dose could even revert the course of time on a limb, restoring it to better-than-new condition. The one issue is an issue that tends to pop up in magic of similar power, and that was the limits. Too much of the potion could cause severe lasting damage, such as kidney failure, or worse. Too much of a good thing, especially in a short period of time, could actually be a bad thing.

Applying the potion was quick, and its effect was even quicker. He spread it over the the blistered wound, and immediately he could see muscle knit itself back together. It didn't take longer than a minute before the entire wound was in the process of healing. It was fascinating to watch.

It was lucky there were no internal injuries. His scanning magic was not nearly as comprehensive as the medical droid's scan, but if there had been an injury, an entirely different and far more unpleasant potion would have had to have been administered. Harry wouldn't say that the Jedi was lucky to have only been hit in the back of her shoulder with a blaster bolt, but it could definitely have been worse. She could be dead.

Harry watched the Twi'lek for a few minutes. Even heavily injured and with a pained look on her face as she slept, there was still a beauty to her. Harry knew that the Twi'lek species was considered very highly in that regards amongst other species, so much so that they were often taken as prized slaves. And the Twi'lek people knew it, sometimes giving up their own children for profit.

The discovery of an entire galaxy full of aliens was an eye-opener for Harry. He wasn't xenophobic by any means, as he had spent plenty of time around goblins, merfolk, centaurs and house-elves, even a talking giant spider. But there was still some shock about just how diverse the galaxy actually was. He was still learning about new species every day. There were something like _fifty million_ inhabited systems.

The Twi'leks were interesting. They were humanoid in shape, came in several skin colors, but also had two, sometimes more, sensitive tentacle-like protrusions coming from their head, called lekku. Humanoid, but obviously not Human. Not to mention, somehow the galaxy was full of Humans that did not originate on Earth. He still had no idea how to explain that, and each answer he came up with was more unlikely than the first.

Aayla Secura was a Jedi though, a warrior first and foremost, a protector of the people. She was more of a warrior than Harry had ever been. That she had been shot in the back meant betrayal. For some reason, her own troops that she had put her life on the line for had betrayed her, and seemingly every other Jedi in the galaxy. That was the ultimate dishonor, and Harry did not abide traitors.

Within fifteen minutes, her labored breathing had smoothed out and turned into an uneasy, but controlled pattern. She was asleep, but her dreams were troubled. She would live.

The medical droid finished its routine and zipped off to the side and powered down all of its processes except for its passive scanners. It would monitor her as well as anyone else on the ship, which was a useful feature.

That just left Harry with the dilemma to actually do with her. It was an important choice he had to make. He could leave her sleeping and let her rest, or he could wake her up and get answers. Any other time, and Harry would likely let her rest. But, Harry had a hunch that time was of the essence, more so now that it had ever been. War was very profitable for a bounty hunter, but it was crucial that he kept a finger to the pulse of it. The tides of war could change at any time, and something was clearly happening.

With that in mind, there were a few precautions Harry had to make. He had already done the first, by locking away her lightsabers. There was always a chance that when he woke the Jedi up, she would panic and start attacking him. He would prefer that wasn't done with a lightsaber, as he prefered to not die if at all possible. And she had two(!) of them. He didn't know much about the fighting styles of the Jedi, but he did know that dual-wielding lightsabers was a rare and difficult feat that only the most skillful employed.

That only left two things Harry had to worry about, her martial abilities, as well as her Force abilities. Sometimes they were even combined. In a straight up fight, she'd likely kick his ass. But, she was coming off an injury, and would likely be very groggy, so Harry wasn't worried too much about that. That left her Force abilities.

Jedi tended to not have too many different abilities at their disposal, instead focusing on just a handful that would be useful in their roles as protectors, and mastering them. Harry knew nothing about what Aayla Secura in particular could do, as even with limited skill sets there was some variance, as some Jedi focused on defensive abilities while others were more combat oriented. But generally, most Jedi could do various pushes and pulls, and Harry would rather not get flung across the room.

The best Harry could do was to simply present as least-threatening posture as possible. He would not do anything to provoke her in any fashion, and he would not restrain her in any manner. Obviously, the Jedi would be curious as to why he disarmed her, but Harry would rather that than get immediately disemboweled from a delirious Jedi who woke up after just being attacked by her own troops.

No, it was definitely best to err on the side of caution.

Shrugging to himself, Harry leaned over and gently shook her shoulder, the one that hadn't been shot. Instantly, the Jedi went from asleep to awake and panicking within the space of a half a second. She jumped off of the table and into the air, landing on the ground on the opposite side of Harry. She immediately reached for her lightsabers, only to come up short.

"Easy there, Jedi Secura," Harry said, holding up both of his hands in a placating gesture.

'"Who are you?" she demanded, taking up a fighting posture, right leg back and hands up at the ready. "Where am I? What do you want?"

"I'm Harry Potter," Harry said, still holding up his hands. "I brought you onto my ship and healed you. I saw you get gunned down by your own soldiers."

With that announcement, the Jedi looked down at her own body, and where there had been charred flesh on her ruined shoulder, it was now healed. "How long has it been?" she asked warily.

"Less than an hour," Harry replied. "I'm not sure what happened, but I felt many Jedi life-forces all throughout the galaxy get snuffed out almost simultaneously… you were close enough that I just managed to take out the clone troopers before they finished you off."

"You're Force-sensitive?" Secura asked. Harry noticed that she had quite a peculiar accent, one that he would classify, if the circumstance was different, as appealing.

"That's one word to describe it," Harry said. "In another place and time I may have undergone Jedi training, but I doubt my home planet is even in your database. None of your Order ever came knocking."

The Jedi paused for a second before responding. It wasn't a terribly atypical statement. There were many across the galaxy who were force-sensitive, some of which who would be viable candidates for training, if only they had been known. The galaxy was a massive place, and the Jedi were outnumbered a trillion to one.

"So, you saved me?" the Jedi asked. She adjusted the burnt strap of her leather top, which was agitating her freshly healed skin. "I was on a mission when I felt the same disturbance in the Force… I could sense my brethren dying. It distracted me, and just as I realized that, I realized I was also in danger. I only just dodged the opening salvo. I tried to fight back, but there was so many of them. I vaguely saw an Aggressor-class ship rip through the air - that was you?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "Something was off, and I'm not one to stand idly by. Do you know why it happened?"

'No, but I would like some answers," Secura replied firmly. There was pain in her voice. "Just… I can barely sense anyone, my vision is clouded. There's so few, how many must have died…?"

Aayla Secura looked despondent, lost, and Harry took that as his cue to reach into the drawer, pull out her lightsabers and hand them back to her. She looked surprised, but grateful as she gingerly snapped them back onto her belt. She relaxed slightly now that she was armed again.

"Others must have survived," Harry said. "Surely not everyone was leading troops at that exact moment. Someone must know what happened."

"I can't focus," she said as she closed her eyes. "There's too much feedback. The Dark Side is more oppressive than it has ever been."

"You were shot in the back by your own soldiers," Harry said. "Given how widespread this seems, someone must have given the order. Probably this "Dark Side", whatever that is."

The Jedi nodded grimly. "Few people could give such a command to the entire army," she said. "And for any of those people to be compromised… it would be quite bad."

"Who would want to take the Jedi out?" Harry asked. "The Separatists of course, but it was the clones who attacked you."

"We've had our fair share of enemies throughout our history… but to do something like this?" Aayla Secura shook her head. "I think the Sith Lord has finally played his hand. We've been searching for him for years now, but we've never been able to find him. He hides himself from the Force well. Count Dooku must have been taking orders from someone, been trained by someone…"

The Jedi then seemed to take in Harry's appearance as well as the medical bay.

"Who are you exactly?" she said. "Are you Separatist or Republic?"

"Well, I'm a bounty hunter," Harry said casually. "I was in the area after just finishing up a job when I felt the same disturbance you did. But, if I had to choose, I'd say I'd much prefer the Republic to win the war, if only because I detest slavery."

Jedi Secura paused at the new information. "If it is profit you're interested in, bounty hunter, I will make sure you're well rewarded if you bring me to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant."

"I know of the Jedi Temple, but if the Jedi were betrayed, would that not be ground zero?"

"Then we must get there quickly," she said.

"We'd be flying straight into a trap."

"A trap where I may learn who is behind this," the Jedi insisted. "If nothing else, there is critical data stored at the temple. A millennium's worth of knowledge of our Order, information on our troop movements, even information of force-sensitive younglings throughout the galaxy."

"Perhaps you should try calling the Temple first," Harry suggested. "So we're at least not flying in blind."

The Jedi nodded. "May I use your comms?"

"Sure," Harry said. "Over here."

Harry showed her out of the medical bay and out into the main corridor. Aayla Secura took in the inside of the ship, appraising the layout. It wasn't too atypical from what was expected of a bounty hunter's ship, with multiple crew cabins, an armory and several small holding cells, but the one thing that stood out to her was that it felt kind of empty. It was sparsely decorated, giving little insight into Harry's personality. She didn't mind it.

Taking a seat in the pilot's chair, Harry started scanning the holonet for breaking news while the Jedi made her call. She sat down in the co-pilot's seat, sinking slightly deeper into it than she was expecting, and brought the receiver headset to her head after punching in the command on the console in front of her. The Jedi Temple had several lines of communication for different levels of access, everything from the public line, to a highly secure line to the Jedi High Council itself. She tried them all, and the message was the same.

" _This is a repeating message to all Jedi. The war is over. The Confederacy of Independent Systems has been defeated. All Jedi are to return to the temple for debriefing. This is a repeating message to all Jedi…"_

"Definitely a trap then," Harry idly commented.

"I agree," she replied. "Yet, I see no other option. If other Jedi have received this message, they may head there as well. We _must_ go. Whatever your price is, I will pay it."

"I'll keep a tab then," Harry said dryly. "Getting there might be tricky. The hyperlanes will be crowded and likely monitored, but the Perlemian Trade Route is still the fastest one. Once we get to Coruscant itself, it will be easier, as this ship has cloaking technology."

"This ship is capable of stealth?" the Jedi said in surprise. "That is fortuitous."

"Quite useful in my profession," Harry agreed. "Very well. We'll have a few hours before we get to Coruscant. I'll leave it to you to come up with a plan. You know the Temple, and I don't, and I do prefer getting out of Coruscant alive."

The Jedi nodded and pulled up a map of the Temple from the database. It was a very large building in the heart of Coruscant near the Senate building. It was far larger than even Hogwarts was, though Harry was not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. There would be a lot of room for potential fighting, yet it may take forever to get anywhere.

As the Jedi examined the layout, Harry brought the ship into hyperspace. The Perlemian Trade Route was a direct route from Coruscant all the way to Felucia and even farther. Felucia itself was just two quick jumps off of it, so not too far.

Once they were on the direct hyperlane, Harry let out a yawn. He was well and truly tired, and he felt his eyes get slightly heavy. He'd been up over thirty hours by this point due to the bounty hunting and how time critical those things were. And now that he was back in the comfort of his ship, he didn't feel like there was any harm in getting a few hours of shut-eye. It wasn't long before he was out cold.


	3. Chapter 3

Harry's dreams were troubled and he ended up snapping out of his sleep a few hours in. There was sweat on his brow which he wiped away. It wasn't a nightmare, but it was an ill omen of things to come.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the Jedi was sitting in a meditative pose, gathering her strength and building her resolve. It had been sloppy of him to fall asleep in the pilot's chair with an unknown on the ship, but he didn't think anything bad would happen. She was a Jedi, and there was a code they lived by. Usually.

Harry tapped a few buttons on the console in front of him and scrolled through the passive scanner readings. There was nothing out of the order to report, no anomalies, and the only real thing of note seemed to be the higher-than-average amount of traffic, as well as a significant amount of chatter going on the holonet. Something was going on, but no one really knew what it was. Whatever it was, it wasn't good.

They were nearly to Coruscant. The Perlemian Trade Route was a very efficient hyperlane, and with it they had travelled nearly a third of the charted galaxy in a single digit amount of hours. His long range scanner was detecting a massive amount of traffic near Coruscant itself, even more than normal. It was the capital of the galaxy, and there were a dozen or more major hyperlanes that all lead there. He would have to take some care in piloting the Revenge to the planet. It wasn't the hyperspace travel itself he was worried about since it was nearly statistically impossible to collide with another ship during it, but rather, it was coming out of hyperspace and into local orbit.

"It won't be more than thirty minutes," Harry called out to the Jedi. There was no response. Again, Harry looked at her. She was meditating, though as he watched for a moment, Harry realized that she was _asleep_. Harry hadn't been the only one that had been tired.

A small smile crossed his face. He couldn't begrudge her having fallen asleep during her meditation, but it was funny. She had gone through the ringer, both physically and mentally, so it wasn't that much of a surprise. Harry's day had been long, but he wasn't the one that he been betrayed by his own soldiers and shot in the back.

Harry poked her and she woke up immediately. Her eyes blinked a few times as she reached for her lightsabers, temporarily confused by the strange environment.

"Easy there, General," Harry said, holding his hands up once more. "We're almost to Coruscant."

""I'm not a General," she said.

"What?"

"I have no troops to be a General of," she clarified. "What with them trying to kill me."

"My apologies," Harry said. "I'm unused to dealing with Jedi and I often forget how to address one."

"A non-Jedi can either use Master as a sign of respect regardless of the Jedi's held rank or simply Jedi if you're unsure," she said. "Right now, until the status of the chain of command is ascertained, you can just call me Jedi Secura."

"Got it," Harry said. "Anyways, We've got thirty minutes at most until we're in orbit. Do you have a plan?"

"One must assume that the Temple is being watched," the Jedi Master said. "By whom, I cannot be sure. If that broadcast is being used to lure in unsuspecting Jedi into an ambush, then we must prepare for the worst."

"The worst being if the Sith themselves happen to be there waiting."

"If that is the case, we run," she said. "Run and persevere. We'll try and find other Jedi and plan a new attack, one that doesn't involve us walking into an ambush."

"Right. And if there's no Sith, and just clone troopers?"

"Then we defend ourselves as we complete our mission."

"In that case, I should go prepare my gear," Harry said. "Usually I'm one for stealth, but if we're to face down a battalion on the ground and inside a fortified building, I'm going to need the big guns. Specifically, The Big Gun."

The armory was well-stocked, but it wasn't overflowing. He didn't have enough weapons to arm a barracks or anything like that. But, what he lacked in quantity, he more than made up for in quality. He had different weapons for the different expectations he had for potential bounties, as well as backups and spare parts.

Truthfully, using weapons wasn't something he had ever had to do until he made it out into the galaxy. Using a wand was effective, and could even do quite a lot of damage, but experience has shown him that the proper use of a well-made blaster could be just as effective. There was no risk of him getting tired from using it, and no chance of accidentally burning down a house or shorting out the life support systems in a spaceship.

Harry would never eschew his wand, it was just his backup, and he had a backup for that as well, in case things went pear-shaped. Using a wand to kill a hundreds soldiers with Fiendfyre would bring undue attention to him, and he did not want that. The wand was much better for subterfuge. Plus, killing with magic just felt… wrong. He avoided that whenever possible.

The far wall, not that the room was very big, held three lockers with thick glass windows built in. Each one contained a suit of armor for use in various situations. Many bounty hunters had their signature armor, and Harry was no different. It just wasn't _this_ one though.

This one was all black and made up of scales. Not real scales, but metal ones. There were thousands of small metal plates all weaved together to give a very fearsome image. They plates were quite strong, indeed, the use of magic made them quite durable, and the usage of scales increased the surface area of the armor a thousand-fold, as to be better at dispersing energy.

It was a full suit of armor, with a helmet. Wearing the armor was the exact opposite of subtlety. It was bulky, and heavy, but the protection it offered was unparalleled for the amount of space it took up. Sure, magic could make it slightly lighter, and he could dissillusion himself when wearing it and mask some of the the sound it made, but that just wasn't necessary.

Putting the armor only took a few minutes, afterwhich Harry began to inspect The Big Gun, his prized weapon. It looked like it wouldn't have been out of place on the outside of a gunship and used to destroy starfighters or ground emplacements with ease. It was a heavily modified Z-6 rotary cannon, and would do very well if they had to assault their way into the Jedi Temple.

Harry made his way back to the cockpit and saw Coruscant approaching in the viewport. It was a very interesting planet, though Harry wouldn't use the word beautiful to describe it. It was the heart of the galactic community, and the entire planet was made up of one city. A _trillion_ people called the place home, though Harry wasn't one of them. He had been to the planet countless times, as being a hub of the galaxy meant that anything and everything could be found there, including criminals. But, he really didn't like the place.

There planet was awfully busy, even by its normal standards. The traffic was out of control, and every dock and spaceport was at full capacity. There were far more warships in orbit than was typical. Something was definitely going on.

The Jedi turned to him as Harry vented the ship's heat sink and activated the stealth module. "An emergency session of the Senate has been called," she said. "Every senator in the system is going to be here."

"When?" Harry asked.

"Approximately one hour," she replied.

"That gives us just enough time to get over to the temple without being seen," Harry said. "And hopefully the meeting will serve well enough as a distraction."

"It's as good of an opportunity as we're going to get," she agreed.

The Jedi Master began to explain the layout of the Jedi Temple as Harry carefully piloted the ship towards the city center. The Rowena's Revenge may have stealth technology, but it still obeyed the laws of physics. There was only so much magic could do in that regards. He could bolster the heat control well enough with the proper precautions, and the ship could become perfectly invisible. Those were things that could be done _without_ magic, though magic certainly made it easier. Either way, what wasn't possible was to stop the ship from taking up physical space. Bumping into other ships was a very real possibility, and the skies of Coruscant were quite crowded. It was one thing to be able to fly down a hyperlane at faster-than-light speeds and not having to worry about hitting another ship because space was just so damn vast, but on Coruscant with a trillion people, it was a very real possibility.

Harry had to be very careful, and as such, the trip to the Jedi Temple took most of the hour. It would have been faster to go there without stealth, but the risk was too great. Ships of his size were not permissible in local airspace without special clearance, and as he got closer to the planet's administrative center, that was doubly true. So, instead of being denied permission to fly in the Federal District, he just didn't ask for it.

The Jedi Temple was a massive building, thousands of years old. Of course, it had been rebuilt and renovated a few times in all those years, but it still sat upon its original location just down the road from the Galactic Senate chambers. Shaped like a ziggurat, it was hard to miss.

Near the Temple itself, and all of the surrounding area near to the Senate building, the entire airspace was heavily restricted. As such, Harry was able to relax slightly without the fear of another ship crashing into him. Though, it _would_ be awkward if there were other stealth ships in the area.

"Well, we're here," Harry said. "And… so are they."

Outside of the temple were hundreds of clone troopers and a few pieces of mechanized weaponry, along with parked gunships. They weren't outwardly hostile, but their presence at the Temple was definitely circumspect.

"I suggest the side entrance," Harry said dryly. "Or, I can blast them with the ship… but I doubt that will turn out well for us, seeing as how we're in the middle of the Capital."

"Agreed," the Jedi Master replied. "We can go in through the side entrance. It's a more discreet entrance for those wishing to enter without scrutiny, but there's still a security checkpoint."

"But at least we won't be out in the open," Harry said. "Those will better our odds. How much longer until the session starts?"

The Jedi Master toggled the display until it was showing a feed from inside the Galactic Senate. Vice-chairman Mas Amedda was standing regally in the center, ceremonial staff held firmly. The raised dais to his right was empty, though the Chancellor was waiting off to the side, hooded. In the background, hundreds of delegation pods were docked into the wall. Each one housed the delegation for a single world. Many of them were empty, due to the suddenness of the emergency meeting, but just as many were full.

Moments later, the Chancellor stood up and ascended the dias. "My dear senators," he began. "A great treason was committed today. The Jedi have shown their true colors. Recently, they've poisoned the waters on Felucia, blockaded the skies of Christophsis, and just today, tried to assassinate me. They sent four of their Order, including the leader of the Order, Mace Windu, after me. I would have been dead were it not for Anakin Skywalker, whom saw the council for what they really were." The Chancellor paused to collect himself as a dark look crossed his already shrouded face. "I hereby declare the Jedi Order enemies of the state, and I hereby put forth a motion to consolidate power, to declare a movement to end the war, and to nominate myself to the position of Emperor in the new Galactic Empire. All those who support -"

"That… can't be good," Harry said. "What the hell is going on?"

"I think we're about to find out," she replied solemnly.

"I guess that's our signal to go down then," Harry said. The Jedi mutely nodded, the words of the Chancellor having shook her to her core.

Harry opened the back ramp and jumped down, using his magic to keep him for splatting. Aayla Secura performed a similar maneuver with the Force. Truthfully, they were one and the same, but their disciplines were as different as fire and ice. On Earth, there were wizards, but so too were there shamans, witchdoctors, haruspices, druids and other practitioners. And in the greater galaxy, Jedi.

The fall only lasted for a moment before Harry quickly touched down and popped inside the entrance alcove of the building, with the Twi'lek Jedi right on his heels. He glanced up to verify that the ship was still invisible before heading inside the building itself.

The immediate entrance foyer was quite empty of any furnishings, though the foyer itself was quite well crafted. It was against the Jedi code to display any sort of opulence or idolatry, and few of the Jedi had anything in the way of personal belongings outside of their lightsabers and the clothes on their back.

The side entrance hall was long and at the end was the small security checkpoint, lightly guarded, and it _did_ contain some furnishings in the form of tapestries and statues. They all depicted important events of the Jedi Order, so as they would never be forgotten and so that a lesson could be learned. However, some of the walls were empty from where there had once been art, and they didn't get ten feet before one of the clone troopers identified Master Secura.

"Jedi!" the clone shouted. "Neutralize her!"

"So much for making a quiet entrance," Harry said with a sigh. Not a second later, an alarm went off. It was moments like this that he wish he had a second stealth suit to loan out. Magic just wouldn't have cut it in a place drenched with it. But, the stealth wouldn't have been worth much as soon as they had to open a closed door with a bunch clone troopers watching.

"If we make it out of this alive, I will make sure you get every credit owed to you," Jedi Secura said.

"Hey, I'm in this for survival just as much as you are," Harry replied. "No amount of credits is worth this, but my life certainly is."

There were only ten clone troopers at that particular barricade, but each one of them carried a lethal weapon. They opened fire without hesitation, spraying blaster bolts at them.

Harry took cover, steeled himself and turned to Jedi Secura. "Are we really doing this?" he asked. "There's no turning back after this."

Aayla Secura had a single blue lightsaber drawn and deflected the first few blaster bolts away and spared a glance at Harry. She took a deep breath as she declared, "We must."

Her posture shifted slightly and she started deflecting the blaster bolts straight back at the clone troopers. Several of them fell from the immediate rebounds, while other bolts splashed off into the walls, scorching some of the paintings, and in particular, a painting of a Jedi posing using the second lightsaber form.

Secura was so quick that she was inside the cluster of clones and dispatching them with her lightsaber before Harry could even line up a shot with his heavy blaster cannon. The intense heat from the blade was enough to cauterize most wounds it caused nearly instantly, but the floor was still a slick bloody mess.

"How do we disable the alarm?" Harry asked as he caught up to the Jedi. The sound of heavy footfalls in the distance meant reinforcements would be there soon.

"Central command," she replied, wiping some of the blood off her face. "That's where the broadcast came from as well. We're going to have to fight our way in."

"Well, that's why I'm here," Harry replied, hefting The Big Gun. It wasn't too heavy, not with the magic it was enchanted with, but it was still bulky and long, and not at all accurate. But, with a spool of six barrels rotating around to disperse the heat and energy, accuracy did not matter when it spewed death at 1200 shots a minute.

A patrol of clone troops poured out into the hallway, already blasting before they were even all the way in, but a Jedi's senses were lightning fast, even when they weren't using the Force. Shooting an unsuspecting Jedi in that back was one thing, but when they were fully prepared for a fight, it was very difficult to get a shot through, and Jedi Master Secura was a master of her art. The small patrol didn't stand a chance.

"Let's get going," Master Secura said, stepping over a disemboweled body and pointing towards the door to the right of where the patrol had just come from. "It's towards the center of the Temple, and it will be heavily guarded judging by all the soldiers outside."

"Central command is at the center?" Harry remarked lightly. "That's a first."

Master Secura didn't respond as she rushed forward. She was a lot faster than Harry was, even if he hadn't been burdened down by his assault gear, but she didn't rush too far ahead. The only odd part was how there wasn't a constant influx of troops, which meant they were waiting for them.

The side passage opened up into a large room with high vaulted ceilings. There were a dozen or so passages leading off from it, all with closed doors so Harry could not see where they lead. There were stone reliefs all around the room depicting former Jedi Masters of note. At the far end was a receptionists console, though no one was there. There were, however, about a hundred clone troopers in the room, all facing the door Harry and Aayla Secura had burst out from.

Fast on their triggers and well aware of the enemy presence, the clones began unloading into their position. Harry, for his part, was just as quick in deploying the bipod on his gun, as well as the transparisteel shield build into it, giving him a small amount of protection from potential face shots.

Master Secura was quickly on the back foot with a single lightsaber, but soon evened the field as she pulled out her second lightsaber, which was green, and turned herself into a whirling dervish of death. Harry hesitated only a moment before holding the trigger on The Big Gun. He was a bounty hunter, but he purposefully never took missions that involved assassination, and he _always_ chose the "alive" option in "dead or alive'. It didn't sit well with him, but neither did betrayal. This is not what he had planned on doing when he had landed on Felucia the previous day.

The barrels on Harry's Big Gun spooled up for a second before splitting plasma right back at the clones, and they started to die off in large numbers. The clones returned fire, but to little effect. Harry's armor could easily take light shots, and most of them were aiming at the Jedi to begin with.

The issue with a hundred clones in one room was one of sight lines. They were stacked several lines deep, so although there were a hundred of them or more, they could not fire at the same time, not without hitting the person in front of them. Really, the only way they'd get to fire was when the clone in front of them died, and died they did.

The entire battle didn't take more than fifteen or so seconds, but before Harry could even let his gun cool down, several of the side doors opened, and more clone troopers poured out. Harry aimed his gun down one of them and poured fire down the death trap, but it took precious seconds to clear one hallway out while the others went unimpeded.

Aayla Secura was not without tricks. She was perhaps the foremost expert on the dual-wielding style of Jar'Kai, and very little would be able to stop her while she was in the heat of the moment. She was equally proficient in wielding her two lightsabers seemingly independently of each other, and she used one to deflect blaster bolts down one hallway while simultaneously _hurling_ her other lightsaber down another, the soaring blade slicing through every clone trooper in her path before returning to her outstretched hand a moment later. She did the same thing down another hallway just as Harry pivoted his gun to the next one as well.

Within minutes, each one of them had a body count best measured by the dozen. It was getting bad enough that the clone troopers were having a hard time even getting through the hallways as they had to step over their fallen comrades as well as not slip in the blood. No doubt that was bad for morale.

Eventually, it became so one-sided that several of the hallways filled up as high as Harry's head, thanks to a little help from the Jedi Master using her force skills to pull in bodies from the main reception area to further clog several of the hallways. They'd have to pull their fallen comrades out of the doorways just to get into the room.

At some point, a lull in the battle occurred. It was unlikely they were out of clone troopers, as a single Venator-class ship could hold thousands of them, and they hadn't killed even a fraction of that many. Likely, they were planning a new strategy, one that probably didn't involve a frontal assault. Maybe they were getting out the heavy guns, or perhaps they were going to firebomb them, or try and gas them out. Either way, they had to get moving.

Harry tried to keep the emotion off his face, but it was hard. He wasn't a soldier, never pretended to be. Each death weighed heavily on him. Clone or not, these were _people,_ humans, just like him. They weren't slavers or raiders, they were soldiers. Soldiers who were just following orders. Soldiers whose cause Harry had supported a day earlier. Harry'd killed before, more times than he'd care to admit, but never in such a wholesale fashion. He purposefully avoided the direct conflicts in the war. The killing didn't sit well with him, but he had made his choice when he pulled Aayla Secura off Felucia. This was about as far away from the simple low-key life he had been trying to live.

Not a moment after, the sound of more fighting reached their ears. It wasn't far away, but it was distinctly _not_ where they were, and the telltale sound of a lightsaber could be heard. A few moments later, two more Jedi strode into the room.

The first one was male and human, roughly the same age as Harry. He had a full beard and wore the typical brown Jedi robes of the Order. He looked like a respectable sort, and he was, as Harry recognized him immediately as General Kenobi. Harry was glad to see someone such as him survive what had happened, as he was perhaps the third or fourth more well-known Jedi in the entire Galaxy.

To his right was one of the Jedi who was even more well-known than Kenobi. He was short, perhaps a third of Harry's height, and looked like a cross between a frog and a house elf. No one actually knew what species he was, despite having been in the Jedi Order for hundreds of years. He was arguably the most powerful Jedi in the Galaxy, and one of the wisest. He was Master Yoda.

"Master Yoda, Master Kenobi," Aayla Secura said. "I am sure glad to see you both alive and well."

"Mine, the pleasure is," Yoda said. "Survive, we must. Help you, we will."

"We have to shut down the broadcast luring in the Jedi here," Kenobi said seriously. He took one look at the scores of dead bodies before turning his attention to the various doors around the room.

"That's why we're here," Secura said. "This is Harry Potter. He rescued me off Felucia right as my troops betrayed me. What exactly happened?"

"Blind, we were," Yoda said. "The Sith Lord revealed himself, finally he has. Tried to bring Skywalker to the Darkside, he did. Report him to us immediately, Skywalker did."

"Who is it?" Secura asked.

"Chancellor Palpatine," Yoda replied. "Now, Emperor."

The implication of the statement was heavy, more than Harry could process. Secura was speechless for a few seconds. _Chancellor Palpatine_ was the traitor? Harry didn't know what that meant, other than that they had all be played for fools, the entire galaxy. What did that mean for the war?

"Masters Windu, Fisto, Tiin, and Kolar tried to apprehend him," Kenobi said, "But he slew them all, and is now using that as evidence that the Jedi tried to assassinate him. Not long after, he ordered the execution of all Jedi. I only just managed to escape, and Master Yoda had some help from the Wookiees on Kashyyyk. We met up and heard the broadcast, calling for all Jedi to return here, and realized we had to stop that before even more of our Order gets killed."

"What are we waiting for then?" Harry asked. "Let's get to it before they decide to bring in the heavy artillery."

Kenobi sent him a questioning look, as he didn't even know who Harry was, but he trusted in the Force. With a nod, Kenobi set off for one of the hallways where no clone soldiers had come through, with the others falling in step behind him.

The security center was much deeper into the facility, but with three Jedi and a heavily armed bounty hunter, the trail of bodies kept mounting higher and higher. They even came across a patrol of heavies with guns not so dissimilar from Harry's, but they were still no match for the Jedi Masters. Harry couldn't help but wonder how long their luck would last. Perhaps for as long as the emergency senate meeting took, and not a minute longer.

Their destination was deep into the complex, and when they finally reached it, there was a veritable army waiting for them. They were in some sort of large training area, and there were a multitude of bodies already around them, except none of them were clones. They were Jedi, and their padawans. There must have been a hundred of them, all dead,

"Even the younglings…" Kenobi said with sadness. "These are not blaster wounds. These are from a _lightsaber_. Be wary."

All three Jedi tensed and not a moment too soon as the ranks upon ranks of clone troopers opened fire on their position. Harry activated the shield charm built into his armor, causing a blue glow to encase his body as the blaster bolts impacted harmlessly against it. It wouldn't last forever, it wouldn't even last minutes under the assault, but it didn't have to. It just had to see him through the fight.

The three Jedi were a whirl of supernatural speed and agility. Even Master Yoda, who was the oldest being Harry had ever met, and looked every year of it, moved with nearly as much grace as Aayla Secura, who was in her prime. Their lightsabers blurred as they reflected back countless blaster bolts, doing more damage to their ranks than they would have if they had taken the offensive themselves.

Once the tide of battle shifted with numerous dead, the three Jedi unleashed themselves into the clone troopers. Harry did his part, cutting down reinforcements before they could enter through the side passages, and it only took a single patrol to fall under The Big Gun to clog up the doors. The hallways themselves were dozens of feet tall, but the doors were not.

It was a massacre. Master Secura could slice through a dozen troopers at once with a single thrown blade, all while deflecting blaster bolts with her other. Master Yoda was such a small target that nothing even got close to hitting him as he ran between their legs, severing many at the kneecap before finish them off. He'd even jump up and do what Harry could only call a rotary attack, spinning vertically like a saw blade and cutting many down. Master Kenobi was no slouch either, using well-timed movements to move in and out of the troopers, effectively using their own soldiers as shields.

Harry could see why the Jedi were so renowned. The clone troopers knew how to fight Jedi, as they had fought beside them for years, yet there was very little the average soldier could do when a Jedi let loose. Harry had often heard that a Jedi Knight was worth a hundred troops, and a Jedi Master a thousand. With their group, it was evidenced that the clones would need a lot more firepower to even have a hope of cutting one of their number down.

With the battle over, at least for the moment, they dashed across the training area towards the other side, where the high tech security center lay. They had to go around dozens of bodies while trying to keep their feet steady on the blood-slicked floor. Harry did his best to not contemplate the body count, of either the clones or the Jedi. He could not let his emotions get the better of him in the middle of a mission.

The security center was arranged in the circle, with holo projectors all around the outside. Even in an era of faster-than-light space travel, the technology was more advanced than anything Harry had dealt with. Back on Earth, such a setup would have fried if Harry had so much as sneezed in the vicinity, but the Jedi Order had long ago adapted technology into their lifestyle, and they knew how to shield their technology from the Force. Their innovations had been adapted into many manufacturing processes across the galaxy. It why he didn't worry at all when piloting the Rowena's Revenge.

Harry setup The Big Gun in front of the console and kept line of site on the doors while the three Jedi went through the systems. The room itself was interesting, as it appeared to be some sort of training area. In the far back there was even some sort of strange white tree that a handful of children had been slaughtered under. Harry had to avert his eyes from that.

It only took a few moments for Kenobi to find the message that was broadcasting. He quickly deleted it and replaced it with a new one. "This is a warning to all surviving Jedi. Do not return to the Temple or Coruscant. You will only find death there. Palpatine has revealed himself as the Sith Lord. We must persevere, and believe in the Force. Hope is not yet lost, and we will overcome this."

"Security recording, I have found," Yoda said after Obi-wan finished. "Caution, we must take. Heavy, this knowledge is." The other Jedis turned to watch, and Harry couldn't help but glance over his shoulder at the holo-recording.

"Play it," Kenobi said. Yoda nodded sadly.

What played was one of the most brutal things Harry had ever seen. More brutal than the soldiers they had just killed. A single Jedi walked into the temple, and then started attacking all the other Jedi, easily dispatching them, and it was neither clean, nor quick. He did not spare the younglings either. He killed every man, woman, and child. The screams shook Harry down to his core. Then, at the end, his face was revealed.

"Anakin Skywalker," Kenobi said, disbelieving.

"Fallen to the Dark Side, he has," Yoda said. "Converted by Palpatine in the end, it appears."

"If I had not seen this recording with my own eyes, I would have never believed it possible," Kenobi said. He was struggling to hold his emotions in.

"Defeat the Sith, we must," Yoda said seriously. "Before it is too late."

"What is your plan?" Secura asked.

"Confront the chancellor, I will" Yoda said. "Obi-wan, go after Skywalker you must."

"Master Yoda, I must insist," Kenobi said. "Let me go after the Chancellor. I don't think I can confront Anakin. He's like a brother to me."

"You must," Yoda said. "the Anakin you once knew, he is not. How he fights, better than anyone, you know. Highest chance of success, you have."

Kenobi let go of the breath he was holding and calmed himself. "I understand, Master. I will do what must be done"

"What of me?" Secura asked.

"Collect our history in this Temple, you must," Yoda said. "Fall to the Sith, it cannot. A thousand years of data. Holocrons… data cores... Depend on this, the history of our Order does. Needed to rebuild the Order, it is."

"I will do it," she said. "Where should we reconvene when the mission is done?"

"Allies we still have," Yoda said. "Monitored we are, the name I cannot say. Contact you through the Force, I shall."

"I will see you then," she said. "May the Force be with you."

Kenobi followed Yoda out, while Harry followed Secura down deeper into the temple complex. With Yoda going off to fight the Chancellor, that would give them some more time to do what needed to be done.

There was little opposition in their way as they made it deeper. Past the central security checkpoint, there was only one way in, and they had just dismantled the entire battalion that had been guarding it. So, for the moment, they would have free reign of the place.

Their only opposition came from an entrenched unit, deep into the facility and down a set of stairs. They hid behind a makeshift barricade, taking potshots at them as they approached. Jedi Secura reflected each one back as she made her way down the stairs, but the troopers managed to duck behind cover each time.

Aayla made it to the barrier, and simply plunged her lightsaber deep into it and swung it sideways. The sound of a piercing scream indicated that she had hit. A moment later, she hoped over the barrier and cleared the rest of the soldiers with ease. Harry followed, not doing much other than constantly checking to make sure they were not going to be ambushed from behind.

They entered into a large cold room that held many vertical stacks of illuminated databases. Each one was ten meters tall and contained an entire generation worth of data. There was information here that could be found nowhere else in the galaxy, as well as the critical information on the Jedi Order that could not be allowed to fall into the Sith's hands.

"I'll guard the door," Harry said. "You can go Secura the data."

The Jedi master rolled her eyes but never-the-less rushed over to the near-side wall where a large bank of sub-processors existed. She punched in a code on one of the consoles, which opened a mini-vault. Inside was a heavy-looking onyx-colored data-cube. She stored that in an insulated metal chest that she had procured from nearby and rushed over to the far wall and put another code into the security scanner. A short verification process initiated, as that hall was only accessible to Jedi Masters. It took about a minute, and as each second passed, Harry's anxiety increased. There was no way the Chancellor hadn't heard about the assault yet. They'd been in there for quite awhile by this point.

Every minute that passed while the Twi'lek Jedi was in the vault made Harry more and more nervous. Two minutes passed, and then five, and then ten. It was nearly fifteen minutes before she re-emerged, carrying a heavy metal container in her hands.

"You've Secura'd everything?" Harry asked.

"Yes, let's get out of here," she said.

"You don't need to tell me twice."

"And please, no more puns," she finished. "I appreciate the attempt at levity, but it really should wait until we're safe. Also, the emphasis goes on the first syllable, not the second."

She led Harry out of the Jedi Library and out of a different set of side passages, though it still eventually lead to the same bottleneck.. She knew the building better than most, and was able to get them through a path that didn't lead them over piles of dead bodies. Nor was there anyone waiting for them along the way. And, more to the point, Harry's ship was still waiting for them outside, invisible until Harry triggered a remote opener which revealed the inside.

As soon as they made it into the ship, Harry immediately launched them into orbit, not even waiting for the ramp to finish withdrawing. He had a bad feeling waiting around that district.

"So, you got everything?" Harry asked. Aayla sat down next to him with the entire collective history of the Jedi Order on her lap. "What was that black cube?"

"That is a datacore," she said, pulling out the cube. "A thousand years worth of Jedi History are stored on this. There would be more, but the archives have been purged several times over the millennia by the Sith…"

"It's lucky we managed to get there first, before they did it again," Harry replied.

"Indeed," she said. She put the cube away and suddenly stood up. "Do you have somewhere private where I can meditate? I need to await Master Yoda's signal, and I need to… ruminate on what I've done today. I need to clear my conscious. It might take awhile and I cannot be interrupted."

"Yeah sure," Harry said. "The closest cabin is mine, so you can use one of the others. Do what you need to do."

The Jedi nodded her head gravely. She took the datacore and the box holding the holocrons and located one of the crew cabins and locked herself in..

Sighing, Harry leaned back into his seat and pulled the console input closer to him. His hands shook as he went to type something in and he immediately knew it was a lost cause. It wasn't adrenaline, not entirely. It was the post-battle nerves as he was only just beginning to realize the enormity of his actions, actions which paled to what the Chancellor had somehow accomplished, but heavy actions nonetheless.

Harry had just killed dozens of people, and he did not relish it. The magnitude of it had yet to fully hit him, and likely wouldn't for hours. He wished he had the discipline that Aayla Secura had, to be able to meditate on it and accept it, but simply locking away his feelings with Occlumency was not the way. He _wanted_ to feel human. He wanted to be reminded of his actions. He would not take the easy way out.

Grunting in annoyance at himself, he got out of the pilot's seat as soon as they were in deep orbit and took his gear back to the armory. Even in situations like this, he had to take care of his ship and himself. He was covered in gore, and so was his guns and armor. A deep clean would be the first step in reconciling what he did, psychically. Mentally, it would take longer, but he would cope.

He always did.


	4. Chapter 4

When Aayla Secura meant that her meditation would take some time, Harry hadn't expected it to take over half a day. Harry had flown the ship into outer orbit of Coruscant and waited patiently amongst the thousands of ships there were also out there. Things were very tense and everyone was waiting for something to happen.

And then the news started trickling in - the Separatist Council was dead. The war was now officially over, and the Emperor would have an official state-sponsored coronation in the near future.

The whole thing reeked to Harry. Even knowing who the Emperor actually was now, it was incredible what he had managed to accomplish. Harry didn't even know a fraction of the full extent of the events that the Emperor had manipulated, but he had somehow managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the entire galaxy. He had essentially started a war with _himself,_ as he was the leader of the Senate, and was the man behind Count Dooku, who had been the public leader of the Separatists.

That was terrifying. A man like that was extremely dangerous, and Harry was terrified to learn how far deep the manipulation actually went. And there was no doubt in Harry's mind that it went far deeper than anyone was aware of. Like, when did it all start? _How_ did it all start? Harry couldn't figure it out. Usually in retrospect, the signs would be all over the place, yet Harry still saw none. But, Harry only had access to the same information that the public had, so it was possible there were hints, just none Harry was aware of. The bounty hunter's database was no use in that regards.

It was troubling. Yet, it reminded him a bit of home. The self-proclaimed Dark Lord Voldemort had managed to nearly take over the entire magical government from the inside before his existence had even been revealed to the public, though Harry had done his best to reveal the truth. There just wasn't much to be done when the government itself would rather live in ignorant bliss rather than confront the problem, and therefore dooming themselves to failure.

Harry didn't miss them.

While waiting for Aayla Secura to meditate, Harry was restless. He was dead tired and tried to get a few hours of sleep, but to no avail. He was hungry, yet did not have an appetite. He tried to meditate himself, but could not sit still for long enough or couldn't stop his mind from thinking about the the faceless helmets of all the soldiers he had killed. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the dozens of murdered children.

Harry didn't regret his actions, not really. The clones had been accessories to the murder of a hundred Jedi within the temple itself. While the clone trooper helmets were faceless, the Jedi weren't. They had been slaughtered like sheep, within their own place of study, their own home. Men, women and children. Children barely old enough to go to school. And the clone troopers had just standing amongst the dead bodies, waiting for more Jedi to show up.

No, he did what he had to do, but it didn't make it any easier. He'd do it again, if he had to. Harry hoped at least that no more Jedi would be killed at the temple because of his actions. If that meant a few restless nights, then he would manage.

Harry didn't know what his role would be in whatever came next. What he did know, is that nothing would be the same. He had spent years keeping a low profile, trying to live a simple life. And he had a strong suspicion that that was all about to change. The warning signs were all there, and he was someone capable of acting. It would no longer be about massive armies clashing on obscure outer rim planets. It would be something much more personal.

Harry wasn't sure if there was anyway out of getting involved. And at this point, he wasn't sure if he'd even want to. That had gone out the window the moment he had rescued Aayla Secura and raided the Jedi Temple with her. He was invested now.

Like a switch being flipped in his mind, Harry was suddenly out of his funk, and he was _hungry._ He thought it would be rude if he ate without offering anything to the Jedi. When was the last time she had ate anyways? She was rail thin when he had found her, and he hadn't seen her eat since.

She had said to not disturb her. But, that had been over twelve hours ago. The last time she said she was going to meditate, she fell asleep right there in the co-pilot's seat. For all he knew, she could be wracked in nightmares over her entire life crumbling around her, as well as starving.

Harry knocked on the door and paused, listening for any sounds coming from within. However, a moment later, the accented voice of Aayla Secura replied back. "Yes?"

"You hungry?" Harry asked. "I'm going to make some food."

There was some shuffling from inside the room and suddenly the door opened. The Jedi stood there looking serene on first glance, but a closer look at her face showed the tiredness in her eyes, as well as some hastily wiped wetness on her cheeks. Her last twelve hours did not look to have gone much better than Harry's. "I'll have whatever you've got," she said.

Harry nodded and lead her to the mess hall. It wasn't much. The table and chairs both collapsed and stored away in the wall. There wasn't a vast amount of cooking appliances either, just what would be needed on a starship that wasn't planning on serving twelve-course meals. "I haven't had a chance to restock in a bit. I had planned to on Felucia, seeing as how it's primarily a farming planet, but didn't get a chance to. So the choice is between frozen food A and frozen food B. If you close your eyes while eating it, it's not too bad, and it's got all the nutrients you need."

"Honestly, I can eat whatever," she said. "I'm not terribly picky, and my physiology lets me eat pretty much anything."

"That's good to know," Harry replied as he pulled out some frozen meals. There was a fancy device that was used to cook them quickly, though it was nothing like a microwave. He didn't really like it, so he often tried to have as much fresh food as possible. It was at the top of his priority list the next time he stopped at a nice world.

Pulling the table and chairs out of the wall, Harry served the meals. As promised, the Twi'lek devoured her meal with no complaint. One finished, she asked, "Any news?"

"The Separatist Council is dead," Harry said. "So, it looks like the Emperor managed to cut the Jedi Order and separatist movement apart in one cold, calculated step."

"That is… troubling," Secura responded. "Deeply."

"What about you?" Harry asked. "Did you reach enlightenment?"

"No… but I am at peace with my actions. I lost many friends this week, but they will never be forgotten. They will live on through the Force," she said.

"They will live on through _you,_ " Harry said.

The Jedi nodded. "I also know where Master Yoda is. He's with Senator Organa on his cruiser."

"Senator Organa?" Harry repeated. "Who is that?"

"He's the Senator from Alderaan. He's a friend of the Jedi," she explained. "Always has been. He'll be an important ally to have if we're to somehow fight back against the Sith. We're going to need every ally we can get, and we have to do it without getting caught. The stakes have changed dramatically."

"Right," Harry said idly. He tapped a few buttons on the console and the display popped up with Senator Organa's biography. "So, he's royalty pretty much, at least from Alderaan. Charitable guy. I guess that's where we should head?"

"It's as good of a lead as any," she said. "I don't know what his cruiser is called, though it is likely in the Jedi database. You don't have the correct port on your console for this size datacube though.."

"Hm, Alderaan isn't too far, and it is our only lead," Harry said. "Do other Jedi know of his close affiliation? Will others seek him out?"

"I suspect it is possible," she said. "I don't rightfully know. Truthfully, I never paid too much attention to the political side of things."

"Same," Harry said. "I'm all about the action. Could be why I'm a bounty hunter. There's nothing like the thrill of the hunt."

The Rowena's Revenge slowly made its way out of the local orbit. It was necessary to get out of a planet's gravity well before jumping to hyperspace, though it was technically possible to do it without leaving. But there were so many ships in orbit, even in deep orbit, that he had to get a safe distance away from them as well.

Alderaan wasn't too far away. In fact, it was one of the closer neighboring systems to Coruscant. The only issue was that there was no easy direct route. There were asteroid fields and other hazardous uninhabited systems abound between them, making a direct route unfeasible without more advanced local knowledge.

Harry didn't have that, so he took the route that most others took, which was a brief hop back onto the Perlemian Trade Route and then making short hops system to system following the Commenor run, which wound all over the place. It was a bit of a difficult hyperlane, but it was better than the alternative. Going off the beaten path was rarely worth the risk.

Plugging the course in, he watched Coruscant fade away. It would likely be the last time he saw the planet for awhile, though he wouldn't say he'd miss it. The whole place was just a facade. It was the seat of the galaxy, but the corruption was as rampant there as anywhere else, and the whole place smelled. A trillion people in one place was more than Harry could handle for an extended amount of time.

Once they were well underway, the Jedi master spoke up from the co-pilot's seat. "May I ask a question?" she asked.

"Certainly," Harry said. "Though, no guarantee that I answer it."

She nodded. "When were were fighting inside of the Jedi Temple, I saw you do something I didn't think was possible. You created a shield, using the Force. I know it was the Force, and not just a personal shield micro-projector, because I could _feel_ it. How did you do that?"

"Ah, that," Harry said. "Like I told you when I rescued you off of Felucia, some would call me Force-sensitive. I find that term to be a bit too bulky. Like, you're Force-sensitive, but you're a Jedi."

"I'm not sure I follow," she said. "Is there a different term you would use?"

"There's no good term, so I'll just tell you a bit about myself. I'm from a backwater planet that is likely not on any map you've seen, located out somewhere in the vastness of wild space. The people on my planet haven't even explored outside of their own gravity well, let alone heard of the word "Jedi". Yet, what you call the Force was ever-present on the planet, and we call it what many backwater planets call it, when people can perform great feats that no normal person can with mere thought."

"Magic," Aayla Secura said. It wasn't a question, as she had heard similar stories before.

"Right in one," Harry said. "We had a sizable population of Force-wielders, however, there is one big difference between the society I came from and the society the Jedi are apart of. You guys adapted to technology, use it every day. You even use your abilities to augment your natural skills when flying a spaceship, or using your lightsaber. Your knowledge of the Force goes hand in hand with your knowledge of technology, and they were fostered together. You were seen as benevolent protectors of the people. Where I come from, things were much different. Out here, you have technology that the Force cannot even come close to replicating."

Harry paused for a minute while the ship entered the hyperlane. There were only a handful of systems between there and the start of the Commenor Run which would wind its way all the way past Alderaan to Commenor. That it wasn't a straight shot is what made it so difficult. It was easy to overshoot where you were trying to go if you weren't careful.

"That's not so true where I'm from," Harry continued. He had contemplated this topic for _years_ and had quite a few opinions on the matter _._ "At one point in history, Force-users walked openly amongst those without. But at some point, they grew envious of the Force, and they wanted miracle solutions for everything. They started persecuting our kind as unnatural, and before long, we removed ourselves away entirely. Eventually enough time passed to where our existence was just a myth, and that there was no such thing as magic, no such thing as the Force. In the absence of magic, their technology grew more advanced. They could now do things that could have only been done with magic, such as flight. And, in the absence of technology and the largest portion of the planet's population, our kind stagnated. However in light of self-sufficiency, we created many techniques for doing whatever we needed to do, techniques and skills that you likely think are impossible, whether that's because the Jedi Order has simply never had the need to develop such a talent, or perhaps the knowledge has long been lost during one of the Sith's purges of the Temple archives. But there's very little you can't do with the Force, if you know how."

"That's an interesting theory," the Jedi Master said after a moment of contemplation. "It _is_ rare for a Jedi to try and discover new techniques. In the past, that has lead to corruption. There are several accounts of those who have discovered secrets to greater power, and without exception, they have all fallen to the Dark Side. So the Jedi stick to a strict doctrine, and only differ from that under extreme circumstances."

"Same thing happens on my home planet," Harry said. "There are some things that should never be explored. Necromancy, for example. To even directly kill with our power is considered blasphemous by some, which was why I was using The Big Gun, rather than using any of my latent talents. Though, if I was fighting another Force-user, then things would be different."

"I am curious as to where our deviation happens," she said. "Jedi stick to a few basic skills which serve us well enough, and truthfully, I've never really contemplated what is even possible. The temptation might be too great. Power corrupts."

"Power does corrupt, which is why you always have to be careful," Harry replied. "But, my mentor had a saying. It's the choices we make that make us who we are. The Force itself is not inherently good or bad, but it's what we do with it. Knowledge itself is not harmful, but, once you know something, you cannot unknow it, so the temptation will be there. Your intentions could be altruistic at first, but for how long? I would be willing to teach you some things I know, provided you wish to keep travelling with me, which is completely your choice of course."

"Well, I don't have a space ship," she said. "So, you _are_ my ride for the time being. I would like to confer with Master Yoda before I say yes or no to such an offer. Your profession could bring us into contact with many potential allies."

"That's your choice," Harry emphasized.

The Jedi Master nodded her head. "You never did answer my question," she pointed out.

"Ah, well, the answer is straightforward," Harry admitted. He pulled out a talisman from under his shirt. It was pretty small, fitting into his palm easily, and it was made out of a silvery metal. It was unornamented except for a single symbol carved deeply into it. It wasn't in a language the Jedi had ever seen, but to Harry, it was a symbol of protection.

"There's a lot of power in this," Harry said, handing the amulet over the the Jedi. As soon as she had it in her hands, her eyes widened in surprise.

"It feels…. alive!" she exclaimed.

"The protection itself is pretty basic. But I've been imbuing it every single day for months now with the same enchantment. It adds up, bit by bit, and was very helpful against those clone troopers. I wouldn't have stood a chance otherwise, even with my armor."

"This is something you can teach?" she asked. "To imbue something with the Force?"

"It's all about intent and willpower," Harry said. "Once you know the technique and _how_ to do it, it's pretty straightforward, though there's an actual process to it. It ties into what I said before. My people don't have the technology you do. They cannot create shield generators, therefore someone came up with the technique to create a shield using the Force. In fact, there's many different kinds of shields that can be created, depending on the need."

Secura nodded in understanding. "You've given me much to think about," she said.

"Do you need to meditate on it?" Harry asked. She rolled her eyes.

"No, I've meditated enough today," she said. "We've got about six hours to go, correct?"

"Near enough," Harry said. "Unless you would like me to push the hyperdrive? I don't see the need though."

"Our speed is fine," she said. "Does this technique of yours have a name?"

* * *

Alderaan was a beautiful planet. Majestic cliffs and vast blue expanses of ocean were a stark contrast to the planet-wide jungle of buildings that was Coruscant, or the actual jungles of deadly, beautiful Felucia. It was a respectable planet with minimal crime, and as such, Harry hadn't ever stopped there properly.

It was a wealthy planet as well. A tourist location that's exotic, but still soothingly familiar so as to not stretch beyond the comfort zone. As a Human planet, Harry really should have stopped by at some point. However, it was not unique in any specific regards. The Galaxy was a very large place, with many base-Human planets, and Harry hadn't had any particular reason to visit this one in particular.

Harry wasn't sure what he was looking for. There was no signal, no obvious place to go. Secura hadn't given him a name of a vessel, or a time and location for a secret meeting. But, he had chosen to trust her, and to believe in her trust in the Force.

Scanning the system for ships didn't help all that much either. The planet had its own security, and there was a significant amount of trade ships coming too and from. Nothing stuck out as obvious. There was no way to even know if the Senator was in the system.

A few minutes of futility later, Harry started going through the various outlier ship registries. Trade ships and military vessels did not interest him, and there were no capital ships either. He focused on some of the personal cruisers in orbit and docked, of which there were thousands.

It was almost frustrating. But, he knew with enough time, he would prevail. It was nothing he hadn't had to do to track down a bounty. It was expected almost. Perseverance was the key, and when that failed, he would resort to his magic. It didn't come to that though.

After sitting in orbit for nearly two hours, a large ship entered the system. It wasn't quite ten times as large as Rowena's Revenge, but it was quite long, and cylindrical. There was a bank of eleven engines on the back, giving it some significant speed capability, and there were gun emplacements up and down the hull. Yet, it wasn't a warship. It was a consular flagship, and after a brief check, it was registered to the House of Organa.

Bingo.

"That's the one, it's got to be," Harry said, gesturing to the image that popped up on his display. "The Tantive III, registered to the Royal Family of Alderaan. Shall we signal them?"

"I feel like that is the correct path," she said.

Harry pushed a few buttons on his console and then spoke. "Tantive III, this is the Rowena's Revenge, do you copy?"

A few seconds passed before there was a reply. "Rowena's Revenge, the Tantive III copies. What is your query?"

"I have a passenger on my ship who wishes to meet with a passenger on your ship."

"There are currently no passengers on this ship," came the reply. "This is not a passenger transport; it is the service vessel of the Royal House of Alderaan. Please do not waste our time."

Harry turned to the Jedi and rolled his eyes. "I do not know how secure this link is, but my passenger's name is Aayla. The passenger on your ship will know who it is."

There was a noticeable pause then went on just long enough for Harry to be nervous. The Tantive III was quite armed, but it wasn't heavy guns, just enough so to deter smaller vessels such as his own. Though, with the modifications done to the Revenge, he wasn't _too_ worried.

"We wish to open video to confirm your statement," the Tantive III eventually said.

"Certainly," Harry replied. He flicked a switch and suddenly the display was filled with the view inside of the Tantive III. There was a middle-aged man, aristocratic with a hint of grey at his temples. He looked respectable.

"I am Bail Organa," he said. "Senator of Alderaan. To whom do I speak?"

"I'm Harry Potter," Harry replied. He leaned forward and grabbed onto the gimbal that controlled the viewer, and tilted it over to Aayla. "And this is Jedi Master Secura."

"Senator," the Jedi said. "There's been a great disturbance in the Force… but it has led me to you."

"Indeed," the Senator said. "I am pleased to see you alive. Master Yoda told me to expect you. I will transfer docking protocols over to you momentarily. We await you at your leisure."

A light on the console flickered green just as the call cut out. A moment later, the docking formula was loaded into the system. "Well, this should be interesting," Harry said. The Tantive III had entered Alderaan's orbit on the other side of the planet, so it took the better part of thirty minutes to get an approach vector for docking.

The Tantive III was large, but it wasn't _that_ large. The docking bay was just barely large enough for the _Revenge_ and maybe a handful of smaller vessels. Harry would go so far to call it cramped, and his ship wasn't exactly big.

Once docked, Harry lowered the ramp and disembarked, with Aayla Secura following shortly after. This wasn't really his gig, but he was already involved so he figured he might as well get in on the ground level.

Two crewmen wearing the royal colors of Alderaan greeted them upon leaving this ship. Welcome," one of the guards said. He was a dark skinned man with a grey goatee, but a strong jaw. "Our instructions are to bring you to the conference room. Senator Organa will be waiting for you there."

"Thank you," Secura said. "Please, lead the way."

The Tantive III was a cramped ship, just like its docking bay indicated. That wasn't actually atypical. Spaceships were almost always designed for utility first, and open space was usually one of the first things to get cut. Even on Senator Organa's flagship, that wasn't any different.

However, that didn't mean it wasn't extremely nice. It was clear that the owner had a lot of wealth, and the rooms and even the hallway had personality to it, and the crewmen all seemed extremely friendly. It was a stark contrast to the usual ship crews Harry came across, which usually ranged from crotchety to outright hostile.

Once they got past the crew chambers and miscellaneous control rooms for the ship's various functions, it actually opened up quite a bit. They were eventually lead to a conference room which Harry would actually consider spacious, and quiet luxurious. There was even a server off to the side waiting to get drinks for them, which they both accepted.

There was a large table situated in the center of the room, taking up a lot of space, but not so much as to feel oppressive. No one was sitting at it. Instead, both Senator Organa and Master Yoda were standing off to the side, near the viewport giving them a beautiful vantage point of the planet below. Upon Harry and Master Secura entering the room, they both turned their attention to them.

"Glad to see you again, I am," Yoda said with a bow.

"I am glad to still be alive," She replied. "All the thanks goes to Harry Potter here in that regards."

Yoda turned to Harry and gave him one scrutinizing look. "My thanks, you have as well."

"What happened?" Secura asked.

"Strong the Sith Lord is," Yoda admitted. "Dueled in the Senate Chambers we did. Much damage we caused. Successful... I was not."

Yoda paused for a moment, closing his eyes in contemplation. "His command of Force lightning, I could not beat," he continued. "Too fast with his lightsaber he was. A formidable foe, he is. Regroup, we must - what of your mission?"

"Successful," she replied. She held up the container that held the data core as well as all of the holocrons she had gathered. "The collective data of the Jedi Order, at least what was held in the library and archives."

"Done well, you have," Yoda commended. "Most useful, this information will be. Secure it, we must."

Senator Organa chose that moment to join in. "You can store it on Alderaan," he offered. "I will even provide the funding to construct a proper archive to store it."

"Generous you are," Yoda said. "But dangerous it would be. Make you a target, it would."

"We just have to hide it or disguise it exceptionally well," the senator said. "That data can't be lost. The future of your Order depends on it."

Yoda paused for a moment. "Still unclear, the future of our Order is," he admitted. "Too many mistakes. Learn from them we must, as to not make them again. Too strict our rules were. Pushed our own to darkness, we did. Contemplate on our future, I must."

"What of Master Kenobi?" Secura asked.

"Waiting for his report, I am," Yoda replied.

"He was successful?"

"Unclear, that is," Yoda said. "Alive, Master Kenobi is. Anything else, the Dark Side clouds. Angry, the Emperor is."

"Much has happened in the last week," the senator said.. "Too much. Dooku dead, only to be replaced by the man who did it. The Jedi set up as scapegoats, General Grievous killed, the order to kill all Jedi…"

"Troubling, it is," Yoda said. "You must put up a loyal front. A senator, you still are. An inside man, you will be."

"I will do what it takes to see the downfall of this man," the senator replied. "I will help you with whatever you need, provided it is within my capabilities."

Yoda nodded. "Gather allies, we must," the ancient Jedi Master said.

"I agree," the senator said. "This war can no longer be fought with armies, so we must resort to new tactics. Guerilla warfare. Sabotage. Misinformation."

The senator paused before sighing. "This topic is heavy," he said. "I suggest we eat first. I find myself thinking clearer with a full stomach."

"Agreeable, that is," Yoda said.

Harry wasn't one to pass up a meal that wasn't cooked by himself, and apparently Twi'leks were capable of eating anything on a whim. During the whole meeting, Harry did feel like the odd man out. He wasn't really anyone. He wasn't a Jedi, and he had no political power. He really just happened to be at the right place at the right time.

That was the story of his life.

To be honest, he was a bit rusty at that sort of thing. It had been _years_ since he had actually been a wizard first and foremost. He hadn't been in a magical duel since he was in his teens, and he was nearly thirty now. But, if helping to stop the galactic evil meant he had to take off the training gloves once more, he'd do it.

It was a great dinner, considering the events of the recent days. There was real meat, fresh vegetables, and drinks that were more than just flavored water. It was quite good. Being a rebel could almost be worth it if that was the kind of meal he could have every day.

They had gone through several courses when the comms opened up. "Senator, there's a message coming through," the voice said. "It's from Master Kenobi."

"Dessert will have to wait a moment," he said to the server. "Send it through."

"Senator," Obi-Wan Kenobi said. "Master Yoda, Master Secura, and Harry Potter. It is good to see you all. I bring grim tidings."

"Safe, you are?" Yoda asked.

"I've completed the mission," he said. "It was difficult, but he was overconfident. I will give you a full debriefing once I arrive, but there is a medical emergency. Senator Amidala is injured and quite _pregnant_ , and needs emergency treatment."

"I will make sure the medical bay is prepared," the Senator said. "What is your ETA?"

"I'm almost within visual range," Kenobi replied. "Also, I should say that the Separatist Council is dead. Anakin killed them, on the Chancellor's orders."

"Disturbing, this is," Yoda said.

"I will fill you in when I dock," Kenobi said. "I'm almost there."

All thought of dessert was forgotten as they all got up from their seats and prepared for Kenobi's arrival. It appeared that they finally had some good news, though with a caveat.

The ship Kenobi was flying was a large ship, though not as large as the Rowena's Revenge. It was large enough to cause a serious docking situation though, and he had just _barely_ managed to squeak it in. Any tighter, and he would have been scraping the paint off of the Revenge.

Two crewmen were there immediately with a stretcher. They were on and off the ship in under a minute, carrying a very pregnant senator on the stretcher, with Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi following close behind. It was all Harry could to do follow awkwardly behind them all as they made their way to the medical bay.

"What happened?" one of the crewman asked as the medical droid started going through procedures. It was an older model droid, and didn't appear half as sophisticated as the one on Harry's ship. Then again, the one on Harry's ship was one specifically offered to bounty hunters due to the injuries someone in his line of work could expect, anything from plasma burns to death.

"Skywalker used the Force and practically choked her to death in his rage," Kenobi started to explain. "He thought she had betrayed him by leading me to him, when I had actually snuck aboard her ship without her knowing. She lead me straight to him, and he did not like that. He struck her down, and then we dueled. The duel took awhile, and when I got back, she was completely unconscious. I came straight here, using her ship."

They crew worked with the droid while everyone watched from outside the room. It was a tenuous situation, and it didn't look good. After several long minutes of work, one of the crew came out to address the Senator and the Jedi.

"The prognosis isn't good," he said. "There's no way of knowing if she'll ever wake up. There could be permanent brain damage. We have to make a choice. We have to induce birth right now. That is the best chance the babies will have of living. If we don't, there's a high chance that she will die, and take them with her."

"Save the children, you must," Yoda said.

Senator Organa nodded in agreement. "Padme would want her children to live."

"There's another issue…" the crewman said hesitantly.

"Yes?" the senator asked.

"We're not equipped for this sort of situation. My estimation was figuring into account a full birthing suite as well as a capable medical droid. This isn't that."

The senator cursed.

"If I may?" Harry said, butting it. "My ship has a fully functional triage droid," he said. "It's one of the newest models available, and I'm sure I have everything needed for a birth."

Senator Organa didn't even pause to contemplate it. "Do it. Bring the senator onto his ship. Make haste!"

Once again, the senator was back onto the stretcher and rushed to the docking bay. All that jostling could not have been good for her, but it was the best option.

The inside of the Ravenclaw's Revenge wasn't that cramped for a single person, but when there was a half a dozen or more, even Yoda would feel claustrophobic. Once inside his medical bay, it was only Harry and the same two crewmen, who at this point Harry assumed had some sort of medical training.

Harry immediately activated the medical droid, which hummed into life and began scanning Senator Amidala, much like it had done to Aayla Secura when he had brought her aboard. The droid diagnosed her immediately and began calculating the procedure of a birthing. Harry wouldn't watch that, so instead, he went into the one medical closet and started collecting the post-birth necessities. If Amidala were to survive, she would need more than just a standard medicine due to her head trauma. She would need a little help in the form of a potion.

Messing around with someone's brain was always a dangerous thing, but Harry actually had a remedy on hand to help with that. Asphyxiation was a popular way that Death Eaters liked to murder their victims with. Such a death would often baffle muggle investigators who would find no obvious cause of death - no marks of strangulation, no toxic amount of gases, nothing. But, if someone manage to survive the curse, there was a potion that could help stimulate brain activity and restore the flow of oxygen to correct levels.

That wasn't the only use of the tonic, as it was most often used as a non-spell based way to reverse the effects of a more powerful stunning spell. It wasn't too dissimilar to a massive burst of adrenaline to kickstart the body.

The tonic was a bit innocuous looking. A single dose was quite large, maybe half the size of a typical drink canister. Harry used a green cylinder to store it in, though the tonic itself was a very light pink. On the back of the cylinder was a sort of barcode, which Harry used to scan it into his system. The medical droid would administer it.

Harry didn't want to stay around for the birth.

He rejoined the others waiting in his lounge. Compared to the Tantive III, his lounge was outright pedestrian, and Senator Organa looked quite out of place, but he didn't seem to mind. He was also the first to speak up and voice the question that they had all been thinking. Well, everyone but Harry.

"I must admit, I didn't even know Senator Amidala was pregnant," the senator said.

"Neither did I," Kenobi said, "And I know her better than most."

"Know, I did not," Yoda added. "Most circumspect, it is. Wonder who the father is, I do."

"I wonder as well," Senator Organa said. "It could be quite the scandal."

"Isn't it obvious?" Kenobi said. "Who is the one person she's spent more time with? The one who followed her around like a lost puppy since the age of nine? Anakin Skywalker, of course. The signs were all there, but I did not think their relationship extended that close."

"Skywalker," the Senator said with distaste. "A Jedi with kids? A _Sith_ with kids?"

"There's a reason we never marry and never have relationships except under very specific circumstances," Kenobi said. "It splits loyalties, and causes emotional stress that we cannot tolerate due to our abilities. Anakin's fall is proof enough of our doctrine."

"Also proof that our doctrine is outdated, it is." Yoda said. "If he had not been forced to hide his relationship... different, things might have been."

"Well, it doesn't matter now," Kenobi said. "Skywalker is dead. We dueled over the lava mines of Mustafar. He got cocky, and I caught him in midair as he tried to leap over a river of lava. I severed three of his limbs with one strike, and I saw him get consumed by the fire. It was a terrible fate, no matter who it was. Now, his children will never know their father, and I can only hope they do not blame me. Hatred is a powerful thing."

"Padme Amidala knows the truth," Yoda says. "Enough, that will have to be."

"Let's hope she lives then," Kenobi replied. He was getting testy, as the whole ordeal was very difficult for him. First, a thousand of his brothers had been betrayed by the very army they had been fighting for, and then he had been betrayed by his own former padawan, and a man he had considered an actual brother. _And_ he had to be the one to put him down. That he hadn't broken down yet was a testament to his fortitude.

"Mustafar was where the Separatist Council was?" Senator Organa asked.

"Apparently," Kenobi said. "I can only presume that the Emperor sent him there to take them out, to tie off one more loose end in his war. I just can't help but think back even farther, to the Trade Federation's blockade of Naboo. Palpatine must have constructed that whole scenario with ousting former Chancellor Valorum, and convinced Amidala to vote him in instead."

"Dangerous, this line of thinking is," Yoda commented. "But true. Deceived and betrayed, we all were. But look towards the future, we must."

"What is our plan?" Secura asked.

"Clear, it is, that the Order needs to change," Yoda said with some contemplation. "A new order, perhaps, to combat the new empire. Less restrictive, it would be. Drive our own to the Dark Side, we cannot. No more, the current Order is. Beholden to your old duties, you will not be."

"We will have to hide who we are," Kenobi said. "Surely, the Emperor will look to finish off what he started, and try and hunt us all down."

"Learn to hide ourselves like he did, we must," Yoda said. "Contemplate that, I will. Allies then, we must gather. Interested in helping, Senator Organa is not alone in. Others there are. Sure of this, I am."

"I've already sent out feelers from the minute the Chancellor renamed himself to Emperor," Senator Organa said. "Mon Motha is just as adamant as I am, and will do whatever she can. I'm sure others will be just as amenable. Amidala likely has more contacts than I do, so once she recovers she will be a useful ally as well. What of your Order? How many do you think are left?"

"Hard to say," Yoda said. "A hundred, perhaps. A handful of masters. Assigned to battalions, not everyone was. Shaak Ti, as an example. Others who had left our order, may yet survive. Ahsoka Tano, possibly."

"Skywalker's former padawan?" the Senator commented. "I reckon she would have been spared, if only because she's not technically a Jedi anymore."

"Find her, we should," Yoda said. "And others like her."

Yoda then turned to Harry. "Useful, your abilities will be," he said. "If you wish to help. Tracking, your specialty is. Use it for good, will you?"

"I'll do what I can," Harry said. "Though if someone doesn't want to be found, then it will be very hard to find them. Not impossible, though. The nature of my business leads me all across the galaxy so I do tend to meet a lot of interesting characters, some of which could be agreeable to lending their aid. I'd need some names of Jedi as well, so I know who to search for. And someone will have to plan out actual logistics and such. Backers, and gun-runners, and supply smugglers."

"In due time," the Senator agreed. "I've got some ideas."

"Survive first, we must," Yoda said.

A few moments later, one of the medical crewman who was assisting with the birth entered the room. "Some good news," he said. "The birth went fine. Two beautiful twins."

"Twins?" Obi Wan repeated in surprise.

"Correct," he said. "We're going through standard care procedures right now."

"What about Amidala?" Obi Wan asked worriedly.

"She's alive, but only just. Now that the pregnancy is over, her body should be able to recover, but it will be a long journey. She's gone through quite an ordeal. But, she's a strong woman."

"How long?"

"It's hard to say for sure," the crewman responded. "Months, at the very least. Perhaps a year. She shouldn't do anything strenuous at all during that time."

"Thank you," Yoda said. The crewman nodded and returned to the medical bay.

"There's an old saying," Harry said. "That a ship isn't a real ship until someone has giving birth on it."

There was a noticeable pause in the room before Senator Organa spoke up. "Anyways, there's an opportunity here, if we wish to pursue it."

"Open to suggestions, I am," Yoda said.

"We can fake Amidala's death," the Senator said. "If her children are Force sensitive-"

"Children of Jedi and Sith almost always are," Kenobi added.

"Then they will be targets," Senator Organa finished. "The Emperor will likely not rest until every Jedi is dead, and in the case of Skywalker's, no doubt he would try and recruit them to the Dark Side."

"Truth in your words, there is." Yoda said. "Proposal, you have?"

"I can hide Amidala on Alderaan, as well as her children. If the galaxy thinks she is dead, no one will know about her children, let alone think they are Skywalkers."

"It's not a bad idea," Kenobi said. "The only issue is that she would have to give up her senate seat."

"That could be for the best," Senator Organa replied. "She'd be a target for the Emperor, now that he has shown his hand. I have enough Senate connections that we won't lose too much there, though she's always been a better speaker than me."

"Not having political obligations would give her more time to look after her children, and to use her non-political connections."

"Her choice it is," Yoda said. "Consult with her when she is awake, we will. Until then, hide them on Alderaan, we should."

Senator Organa nodded. "She'll like it there," he said. "It's a good place to raise kids."

"We should get in contact with her handmaidens," Kenobi said. "Sabé in particular. She bears a striking resemblance to Amidala to the point where if you don't know here extremely well, you'd never notice. With Amidala's permission, she could help the cause in her guise while Amidala recovers."

"A good idea," Organa said. "I know the handmaiden of which you speak. I will get the word out to her as the news of Amidala's 'death' gets out. We could even use it to build sympathy, but that might do more damage to our cause when they learn she's still alive."

"Tread carefully, we must," Yoda stated.

The medical crewman came back one more. "The Senator is safe to transfer at the moment," he said. "She's out of immediate danger, but she'll need some long term care."

"Is she awake?" Kenobi asked.

The crewman shook his head.

"Very well," Senator Organa. "I will make preparations to bring her down to the surface."

"We must discuss our next step," Kenobi said. "Where do we go from here? What will you have me do?"

"Order you to do anything, I will not," Yoda said. "Equals, we are."

"Be that as it may, you are still far more experience than me."

Yoda acquiesced with a nod. "Find Shaak Ti, if you can. Our most knowledgeable healer, she is. Invaluable, her knowledge will be. Escaped the Jedi Temple, I believe."

"I can do that," Kenobi said.

"Set up a new headquarters, I will. Training youngs, I must. More important than ever, that is," Yoda said. He turned his head between every around him. "A secret planet, only I know of. Strong in the Force, it is. Mask our presence, it will. Secure, the holocrons will be."

"What of me?" Secura asked. "You know of my talents. I could go after the Emperor, if you wish."

"Too well protected, he will be," Yoda said. "Wait, we must, until the moment presents itself. Active until then, we must be. Capable, you are. A target, you will be. A symbol of hope, perhaps? Follow the Force and trust in yourself."

Secura closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and nodded. "I'll be the most painful thorn in their side they've ever experienced," she said. "What should I say if someone wishes to join our cause? I can't just direct them to straight to Senator Organa."

"Perhaps that's where Sabé can come in," Kenobi suggested. "Or, we can come up with codenames."

"Or both," Harry said.

"It's a good idea," Senator Organa said.

"Of this, we are agreed," Yoda said. "Begin immediately, we must."

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTES** : I don't really like doing author's notes since I feel like if there's anything that really needs to be addressed, it should be done in the actual story rather than explained outside of it. Plus, I don't like to pad the word count, but since this is the longest chapter so far, I felt like that doesn't matter here.

Anyways, I just want to emphasize that Kenobi's duel with Skywalker on Mustafar is exactly as it happened in canon. It is not my intention to lead anyone on into assuming something different, nor is it my intention to try and have it be some sort of plot twist that Skywalker survives. Literally everyone knows that he becomes Vader, so I'm really not trying to turn it into some big amazing plot twist down the line - it's simply canon. However, I am experimenting with Amidala surviving. I think it could create an interesting Dynamic. Everyone, including Amidala, believes that Skywalker is dead. Skywalker and Palpatine believe Amidala is dead. So they both believe the other is dead, while they're both actually alive. Needless to say, it will be a very awkward reunion.


	5. Chapter 5

After Amidala, the three Jedi, the medical crewmen, and Senator Organa left the ship, Harry stayed on and let go of a long held in sigh. Slowly, he meandered over to the cockpit. It wasn't the first time he would be a part of a rebel organization. This time he was actually prepared, and he wasn't destined to be the one to deal the fatal blow to the Dark Lord. That was a burden off his back.

He sat in the pilot's seat for a few minutes, just staring at the display, his eyes unseeing. He was simply contemplating everything that had happened and had led him to that moment. It had been a crazy couple of days. Locating missing Jedi would be quite tough, but doable as long as they didn't figure out how to mask their presence. He had found Aayla Secura that way, though it was _much_ easier to do when they were on the same planet. Unfortunately, it was quite possible that the Emperor would track them down that way as well. He had no idea what the Emperor could or could not do, but it was prudent to assume the worst. He half-hoped that they _would_ figure out how to mask their presence, if only to avoid that fate.

Just as he was about to hit the button to raise the ship's ramp, he heard the sound of footsteps quickly walking up it.

Harry swiveled his chair around, and to his surprise, Aayla Secura stood there.

"Did you forget something, Master Secura?" Harry asked curiously.

"No," she said. "But, as you may remember, I don't exactly have a ship. The Jedi Order is dissolved, and all of its assets unavailable. Senator Organa cannot just hand over a new ship to a known Jedi either, as that would eventually be traced back to him."

"Right," Harry said. "Well, in case you've forgotten, I _am_ a bounty hunter. That will not change even if I am aiding your group."

The Jedi nodded. "That's why I want to be on your crew."

"I don't have a crew," Harry pointed out.

"Then I can be the first," she said.

Harry sighed. "I'm not sure you know what you're asking."

"I have nothing," she said firmly. "I have two lightsabers and the clothes on my back, which as you can see, are filthy and torn. All I have is my mind, and my abilities. And my allies, which I hope includes you. I've talked with Master Yoda, and he agrees that it's a good course of action. Being mobile is a good plan."

"I get that," Harry said. "Anything is better than nothing, etc etc…"

Harry paused, and stopped himself from venting. He would be a giant target if anyone ever figured out he was working with a Jedi. He had spent years avoiding notice by taking marginal low-risk jobs. But having her there would would get the Emperor's inevitable hunter squads after him, as well as any bounty hunter who was willing to ignore that he was also a guild member, which would be also be inevitable once the bounty was high enough.

Then, there was also the logistics. All of his profits went to himself. But, with an actual crew to pay, he'd have to make a fund for ship maintenance, a slush fund for emergencies, his pay, and then his crew pay. There would have to be an actual pay table. That was annoying, but ultimately part of the job.

Was it worth it? Aayla was strong and extremely talented, and would be an asset. There was no doubt about that. Her mere presence alone would be enough to complete some jobs, and it might even give him access to more jobs that might have otherwise been unavailable. Plus, if hunter squads actually came after him at some point for aiding the Jedi, he'd rather have a Jedi on his side than without.

"Nothing worth doing is ever easy," Harry said after a moment. "Very well, welcome aboard, Master Secura."

"Thank you." she said. She planted herself in the co-pilot's seat once more. "Oh, and I would like to amend something I said to you previously."

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"It's no longer Master Secura," she said. Her face was slightly downcast. "It is a title I have earned, but since the Jedi Order in its current form is no more, it is no longer appropriate to call me that. It also draws attention, so you can just call me Aayla."

"If that's your wish, Aayla," Harry said.

Harry waited a moment to see if anyone else was going to suddenly pop up the ramp into his ship before pulling the ramp up and querying the Tantive III for a departure vector. Once that was received, he powered the ship up, pulled up the landing gear and ever-so-carefully piloted the ship out of the hangar. It was a very tight fit with Kenobi's ship parked practically on top of his, but he made it out unscathed.

"Where are we going first?" Aayla asked once they were out.

"First, we're resupplying," Harry said. "I'm running low on supplies, and that's doubly so with two of us here. Plus, this might be the friendliest port we'll come across for some time."

"Makes sense," she said.

"We don't actually have to get off the ship for it," Harry said. "Alderaan is an advanced planet, and they have automated systems for this sort of thing. Watch." Harry pulled up a menu on the display and started checking off various categories. The computer calculated how much fuel he would need, and then he started adding various supplies. Frozen food for a month, some fresh food as well, and supplies for Aayla. "Is there anything you need?"

"Nothing I need, no," Aayla said.

"Let me rephrase that," Harry said. "Is there anything you _want_?"

"I… I do not know," she said.

"Is there any particular type of food you want? Something you particularly enjoy? What about clothes? Here - pick." Harry shifted control of the menu over to Aayla. "Just make sure you get at least one thing in a style that won't immediately identify you as a Jedi. Like, something that will hide your lightsabers. We can get you some proper armor like mine at a later time. Something like that is best purchased from a specialist rather than a menu."

Aayla hesitated at first, but then begrudgingly picked out a few sets of basic clothes as well as some particular exotic fruit she liked.

"There, see that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"No," she muttered. "It's just… living without the backing of the Jedi Council is going to take some getting used to."

"They live on inside of you," Harry said. "Remember their teachings, but… adapt."

"Perhaps," Aayla muttered.

"Plus, you have to set a good example for Amidala's kids. They're the future of your order."

"That is true," she said. "But, I don't think I'm the type of example they should live up to. I've always been one of the more critical members of the council, and now I've signed on to be on a bounty hunter's ship."

"Well, you win some, you lose some," Harry said nonchalantly. "You can't win them all."

"Yeah, well, the last few days have shown us that."

Harry nodded grimly and initiated the supply order. Aldera was the capital city and the best supplied, so that's where he took the ship. Alderaan was an advanced enough planet that it had an assortment of docks, anything from hangars on the ground, to space docks in orbit. Harry chose the middle option and picked one of the city-based "floating" docks.

The dock was essentially just a dock on top of a building, though the dock itself was situated on top of a transport elevator, which itself was housed in a large cylindrical pillar. At the top were several platforms, each one used to dock a ship for repairs, restocking and refueling. The building was little more than a hotel with conference rooms and the like.

Harry piloted the Revenge to the dock automatically assigned to him and carefully took the ship in. Then, it was just a matter of waiting patiently as the automated systems did their thing. Harry wasn't lazy, but being able to do everything without having to get up out of his extremely comfortable pilot's chair was a great luxury. The only thing he had to do was flip a switch to lower the ramp so a droid could bring the standard supply crate aboard.

To unpack it though, he actually had to get out of his seat.

"Well, since you're part of my crew," Harry stated. "I guess I can show you a few things."

Once the fuel and supplies were paid for, Harry walked over to the crate and pulled out his wand. With a tap of the wand against the crate, the lid popped open, revealing many industrially wrapped packages. With a wave, all the packaged food stuffs floated into the air and soared into the mess hall, where they then sorted themselves away. Almost as an afterthought, the package of Aayla's clothes floated over to her.

"That was an impressive display. How did you micromanage so many at once?" she asked curiously. "And what's that stick?"

"This stick is no ordinary stick," Harry said. "It's a focus. The wood is attuned to you, and the core is from a Force-sensitive animal. In this case, a unicorn."

"What's a unicorn?" she asked.

"Er, it's like a four-legged beast with a horn," Harry said awkwardly. "It's completely silver, except when it's young, in which case it's gold. Only those of pure-heart can get near one."

"Interesting," Aayla said. "But what does the stick allow you to do, exactly? I could feel you using the Force, but it was muted, almost."

"It's a tool," Harry said. "Like, your lightsaber is an extension of your will, this wand is an extension of mine. The Force is like a blunt object, but a wand turns it into a scalpel. It's the difference between using the Force to push an entire wall down versus using it and knocking a small insect off of it."

"So, it regulates it?" she asked.

"Sort of," Harry said. "Think of it like a blaster pistol versus a turbolaser. The pistol is capable of much finer work with minimal collateral damage. Similarly, using a focus to channel your power allows you a degree of precision that would be impossible to obtain otherwise."

"I think I understand now," she said. "That was a good example. Is that something I can learn?"

"Using a wand isn't something that is learned, not exactly," Harry explained. "It's probably not too different than learning a lightsaber form. Like, you learn one early on, and you slowly master it over the years. But, there's a reason you learn it young - because you're more impressionable. That becomes an issue when you're older because it becomes harder to learn a new technique when one kind has been ingrained in your mind for so long."

"That's true," Aayla said. "It's much more difficult, but not impossible."

"Right. You can certainly try, and I'm willing to help you," Harry said. "The only issue is that I don't have a wand for you. They're custom fit. A random one might work, might not. Worse case scenario, it blows up in your hand and splinters fly everywhere. But, I do have some. We can at least try."

"I'd like that," she said excitedly. "This is interesting."

Harry put in the launch procedures before leading Aayla to the armory. One of the armor lockers wasn't quite what it seemed, and with a wave of his hand, it popped out slightly and spun around, revealing a rack of about twenty wands.

"Go ahead, pick one up and tell me what you feel," Harry instructed.

Aayla picked up one of the wands, a slender one about nine inches long, made of a pale yellow wood. She waved it and it jumped out of her hand in a flash of sparks and bounced off the ceiling. "Wow," she said. "I wasn't expecting that."

Harry replaced the wand on the rack and let Aayla try the rest. The results were more or less the same every time.

"I felt _something_ , but I'm not really sure what it is," Aayla said.

"It's like the feeling of wearing shoes that aren't quite the right fit," Harry said. "They work, but not really. Every wand is different, just like every person is different. It's just about trying to find the right match. Tell me, what's it like to use another Jedi's lightsaber? You can, right?"

"We can," she said. "But every lightsaber is different. We make them ourselves. They fit our hands perfectly, and we learn to know their shape and size better than we know ourselves. To use another's feels awkward and clumsy, but you could."

"Same thing applies here," Harry said. "We'll have to make you a wand, but finding the right materials will be difficult. I've never made one for someone who wasn't from the same planet as me, so I have no idea what will work and what won't. But, if we're travelling around a lot, we're bound to find something that works. In the meantime, I can still teach you some things. There's plenty you can do without a wand."

Harry secured the wand rack and flipped the locker back around so the armor was facing outwards once more. What Harry didn't say was that none of those wands worked all that well for him either. Those were all experiments in trying intergalactic materials. The wands were functional, he just didn't know for who.

Exiting the armory, Harry made for the mess hall and immediately dug into his new tea stash. One good thing about rich planets like Alderaan was that they almost always had a great selection of exotic tea. He picked out a white tea that he had never had before and went about to start making it.

"Would you like some tea?" Harry asked. "I've found that it's a good way to ground myself after something stressful has happened."

"I'll try some," she agreed.

It only took a few minutes to craft, and it was delicious. Though truthfully, it was rare when he found a tea he didn't like. He was just glad that his ability to obtain tea did not disappear when he left the Earth. There really was no reason to go back to that miserable planet.

Sitting at the mess hall and enjoying his tea, Harry brought up their long-term mission."I guess we should try and find some of the surviving Jedi now that the ship is supplied," Harry said. "It's not going to be easy though."

"I'll try and reach into the Force again," Aayla said, also sipping tea. She made a weird face at the taste, but continued to drink it. "Even reaching out to Yoda was quite difficult, and he was the most attuned of the Order, and specifically searching for me."

"I'm going to prepare a scrying spell," Harry said. Aayla nodded and closed her eyes, slowly putting herself into a meditative state. Upon noticing this, Harry made his way into the under-storage compartment to get his scrying basin. He hadn't done a proper scrying ritual in a few months, so he didn't keep it on hand. Scrying was useful when he didn't have a specific target in mind, as it allowed him to focus and narrow down his search until he found what he was looking for. When he actually knew his target, such as with the majority of his bounties, a scrying spell wouldn't help as much unless he wanted to focus on their environment. Scrying also had a annoyingly high failure rate, as it was a bit finicky.

Scrying wasn't too difficult of a spell, but it wasn't taught at Hogwarts. It was not something that the Ministry wanted as public knowledge as it was a powerful spell, and setting up protections from such spells was time consuming. Harry knew that first hand, as he had spent months performing it as he travelled along the English countryside with his two best friends, hiding from Voldemort.

The spell fell partially under the realm of divination, if only because it followed a lot of the same procedures in narrowing probabilities until the final answer was the most likely to happen given a specific dataset. At its core, that's what divination was to someone like Harry, who did not have any innate divining ability. It's why Hermione _loved_ Arithmancy despite hating Divination.

The scrying bowl was stored with a bunch of his other miscellaneous objects. Sneak-o-scopes and dark detectors were just a few of the various baubles he had of dubious quality. The scrying basin was a thin stone bowl about an inch deep and about the size of a dinner plate. As soon he took the bowl, Aayla suddenly screamed.

Rushing back out of the storage compartment, Harry found Aayla hunched forwards and clutching at her head. There were tears running down her cheeks. He ran over to her and placed a hand on her back and leaned in close. "What happened?" he asked urgently.

"It was…" Aayla started. She winced in pain as she still clutched her head. "It was like a thousand voices screaming through the Force. I felt Obi-wan still in orbit, but as soon as I tried to feel beyond this system, I was assaulted by the echoes..."

"Are you going to be okay?" Harry asked. "I can get some medicine…"

"It'll pass," Aayla said. "I wasn't expecting it to be that sudden." She paused for a minute to settle her breathing. "I don't think we'll be finding any Jedi like this, not if they're farther than a planet away."

"I'll try a more direct approach," Harry said once it was clear to him that Aayla was okay. He turned away from her and carefully set the scrying basin upon the table. "Think of this as a lens, of a sort. It can help look for a person, or a place, with enough care. I'm going to try and focus on a Jedi's presence."

Harry tapped the bowl with his wand, and suddenly the the surface of the bowl ripplied and turned glassy blue with magic. After a moment, it smoothed out, and Harry held his hand over it. He concentrated, imagining the same exact feeling that he used when he had found Aayla on Felucia. If they weren't suppressing their presence, he would have a good chance of finding them.

Feeling the magic start to build up in the scrying bowl, Harry concentrated harder. His target was simple: Jedi. The magic of the spell would latch on to the nearest sensation if done properly. Visualizing the Jedi was difficult, as there were many from all different species. Instead, he focused on the feeling, the magic. He knew what the Jedi felt like in the Force, had felt them many times before. He applied that same feeling now, through the scrying spell.

The magic in the scrying basin flared up and before Harry could even shout a warning, the entire thing exploded, sending shards of jagged stone all over the room. Aayla gave a quick shriek of surprise as she covered her eyes with her arm.

Harry was left standing there awkwardly with his hand hovering over nothing. There were a few flecks of blood on his face from where bits of stone had flown by. "That… was unexpected," Harry said calmly. "I guess it was too much to hope it would be that easy."

"Nothing worth doing ever is," Aayla replied, tentatively lowering her arm as she did so.

Harry nodded and waved his wand. The broken pieces of stone flew back to him and rearranged themselves on the table, only to fall into a pile once more.

"The Dark Side is strong," Aayla said. "Stronger than it's ever been before. It will not let anyone peer through the Force. Master Yoda might still be able too though. He's much stronger than I am in that art."

Harry waved his wand again and the stones again moved into the shape of the scrying basin. This time the pieces seemed to spark and fizzle as they reformed the bowl. After a moment, Harry was successful, but he still let out a frustrated sigh. "This isn't going to work half as good as it used to, and clearly it was already not working," Harry said with some annoyance. "Getting a new one is going to be tough. But, if you think Yoda can give us some guidance, I'm all for that."

"I'll send word to him," Aayla said.

Upon storing the repaired scrying basin away, despite being little more than a paperweight now, Harry returned to the cockpit and planted himself heavily in the pilot's seat. Aayla took the co-pilot's seat and quickly sent a message off to Yoda while Harry contemplated their next move. "Well, there's nothing for it, I guess. Let's do some business, shall we?" Harry decided. "We can search for some of the Jedi as we go, but it's easier when we have a destination in mind. Let's find us a contract. Actually, no, why don't you pick one out to be your first?"

"If you insist," Aayla said. Harry swivelled the bounty display over to her, listing the various bounties available. When Harry had taken his last bounty, they had still been living in the Republic. Now, it was the Galactic Empire, and many people didn't like that. There were _millions_ of bounties, and not nearly enough bounty hunters to go around. They had their pick of the bunch.

Aayla spent a fair amount of time just going through the program. The interface was quite interesting, and it was a whole world she hadn't really explored before. She knew _of_ bounty hunters, had even fought a few before, but she hadn't really thought about what went on behind the scenes.

The Rowena's Revenge was in deep orbit by the time Aayla had finally found something that interested her.

"Posted nine minutes ago," she said. "The advisor to a local head of government has gone missing, and he needs to be found. Betrayal is suspected, but they do not have the manpower to conduct a proper investigation. Fifteen thousand credit reward for information leading to his discovery."

"Doesn't sound too hard," Harry replied. "Where's this located?

Aayla read the next line before noticeably pausing. "Mandalore."

"Aren't they going through a civil war or something? Nah, forget it. I wouldn't go into that hotbed for a hundred thousand, let alone fifteen. Find something else."

Aayla nodded her head and scrolled through a few dozen more options before finding another. "Posted fourteen minutes ago," she said. "A priceless pre-Republic blaster prototype was stolen from a private collector. Ten thousand credits for it's return. Is ten thousand enough to consider?

"It's a decent amount," Harry replied. "Where was it stolen from?"

"An estate on Chandrilla," Aayla said. "It's a core world, though I've never been there."

"I have," Harry said. "Nice place, though it has its bad side. We actually passed it on the way to Coruscant from Felucia, and again on the way here. It's not too far. Good find."

A small smile appeared on Aayla's face from the praise.

Harry immediately hit the "accept" button and forwarded a call to whoever it was. The bounty did not give the name of the client on the main page, though now that he had accepted the bounty, he had access to the contact information.

The holo display lit up a few second later with a tall obese human sitting regally in a large throne like-chair. There was a guard on either side of him, as well as what looked like a protocol droid and another well-dressed man. "Lord Hartwick, state your business," the obese man said in a bored tone.

"Harry Potter, answering your bounty on some stolen property."

"Ah, yes," the man said contemplatively. "Unfortunate business, that. Upon hearing of the Emperor's new dictates, my majordomo took it upon himself to raid my estate for some quick credits and fled the system, likely looking for refuge as far away as he could get."

"Not a fan of the new self-appointed title, was he?" Harry asked.

"Few people are," Lord Hartwick said. "But there is little to be done about it. Before long, business will continue as usual. However, I want what is mine back, and I want you to track him down, and track down the fence he had passed the items onto if necessary. The only one I really care about is the blaster, but I will pay an extra 250 credits for each additional item of mine that you recover intact."

"It seems like a man like you would have your own resources to track down such a man," Harry pointed out.

"A man like me obeys the law, including jurisdictions," he said. " _You_ are my resource. Bounty Hunters have all but free reign to do as they please these days, and I would have you use that ability."

"Fair enough," Harry said. "I will have to visit your estate of course. I need to familiarize myself with what I'll be searching for."

"Certainly," he said. "You'll have the coordinates transferred to you momentarily. I have other business to attend to, so your contact will be my chief curator, Mason Lorwyn."

Whereas Lord Hartwick was massive, Mason Lorwyn was slender and reedy. He was older too, with huge grey eyebrows and a well kept moustache. For some reason, he reminded Harry of a prairie dog. Harry's immediate impression was one of intense distrust, but he didn't care that much as long as he got paid. Lorwyn's face was already set in a sneer as he looked down upon Harry, as if a bounty hunter was beneath his consideration.

Harry was used to it.

"I'll be in touch," Harry said. "I'm en-route now."

Harry toggled the display off, ending the conversation. Turning to Aayla, he commented, "Well, that went about as expected," he said.

"Are clients usually like that?" she asked.

"Hartwick seemed pleasant enough. Lorwyn is the kind of person that I encounter most often. They hate hiring a bounty hunter, but they turn a blind eye and do what they think is necessary. They look down upon you out of a sense of self-importance, and to pretend that they're morally superior."

"Typical," she said. "It's good to know some things don't change across species. So, what's the plan?"

"I've done this kind of job several times," Harry said. "They usually play out the same way. The thief never works alone. There's always someone else on the inside helping them out, and keeping tabs on how close the investigation gets."

"That must be Lorwyn," Aayla said immediately.

"Nah," Harry dismissed. "He seems the type, but it's too obvious. I'd sooner guess that it's Hartwick himself. Personally calling in the bounty hunter, and being up front with them, is the perfect cover for robbing his own estate. He has an excuse as to not have to deal with us directly as well."

"To what end?"

"Perhaps a change in allegiance, or maybe he just wants a change of scenery, or he's looking to restart his life with a new identity elsewhere. But me? If I were to guess, I'd say insurance fraud. If this guy is willing to pay ten thousand to play into the ruse, then this guy probably stands to make hundreds of thousands, even millions."

Aayla paused for a moment, carefully choosing her words. "What if… what if it's just as it seems? No ulterior motives?"

"That's… just so boring," Harry said.

"I think you've spent too much time floating through space on your own," she said. "Your imagination is getting the best of you."

"Eh, you're probably right," Harry said with a wave of his hand. "But you're here now. You can help reign in my flight of fancies."

"So what do we do?" she asked.

"I tell you what," Harry said. "If you're right, and everything is on the level, you can pick the next mission as well. If I'm right, I get to pick."

"I won't do anything that is against my code," Aayla said. "All because the Jedi Order is in shambles doesn't mean I will mutilate my own beliefs."

"Nor will I ask you to," Harry said. "It's just a friendly bet. I mean no harm by it."

"Well, you're the captain," Aayla said. "And it's your ship I've fostered myself on. I agree to your terms."

"I'm glad that's sorted," Harry said with a small smile. He pulled up the coordinates that had been sent to him and cross referenced them to the planet's grid. A cursory scan told him that coordinates were legit, which was always a good start.

There was some truth to Aayla's words. In the vast blackness of space, inside a ship sixty-five feet long all by himself, a wandering mind was not always healthy. Staring into the the void for too long would irrevocably damage the psyche. But, it was Harry's choice. There was a reason that he hadn't partnered with someone until then, and that was mostly because he valued his independence very highly, and now there was someone who was depending on him for work, and pay.

Going through hyperspace could be tedious, though Harry didn't particularly mind. But he'd admit that it couldn't be healthy for just a single person. Being trapped inside one's own mind had been the downfall of many. He hadn't felt any adverse side-effects yet, but would he recognize them if he did? An insane person didn't know they were insane.

Harry had to monitor the helm the whole time as well. Autopilot existed, and Harry made judicious use of it, but hyperlanes could be extremely dangerous. It was nearly impossible to take a ship in a straight line due to all the stars and other celestial bodies, and even the well-charted hyperlanes had some danger. There were alarms and such on the ship if it started to go off course, but he couldn't exactly go to bed while going faster-than-light. He wouldn't have enough time to react if something went wrong.

More than a few nights had been spent in his captain's chair after he had accidentally fallen asleep. That was often the result of multiple thirty hour missions. Some hyperlanes could take days, depending on where he was going and the amount of traffic and bends he had to calculate for, while simple paths to a place like Chandrilla would take less than an hour.

There just wasn't really a good opportunity to get a good night's rest, unless he wasn't actually on the job. He prefered drifting in orbit to get his rest as opposed to docking at a hangar or space station, but the truth was that without a partner to watch his back or monitor the ship, neither was all that safe either. It would be nice to be able to get a proper sleep without worrying about everything turning pear-shaped. He had his own failsafes, but there was little he could do if his ship decided to veer into a star, or collided with a another ship at cruising speed.

Chandrilla was a little closer back to Coruscant than he wanted to go, but it wasn't Coruscant itself. It was the home planet of the Senator that Bail Organa had mentioned, Mon Motha, though Harry knew literally nothing about her. However, if they were going to be loosely affiliated with each other at some point to overthrow the Emperor, that would likely change at some point.

Like Alderaan, Chandrilla was a beautiful planet. Even more beautiful, perhaps. On the surface, it reminded Harry a bit of Earth. But, that was only if the Earth had managed to curtail its rampant overpopulation and pollution problems. Chandrilla was an ideological paradise where all of its wars were fought in the political arena, and there were more artists than police officers. If anything, that made its inhabitants more ruthless, as the word "no" was simply an invitation for a debate.

The traffic in orbit wasn't as bad as Harry had expected. There was still a lot of uncertainty as to what was going to happen in the newly formed Galactic Empire, and Chandrilla would not be that great of a refuge spot due to its close proximity to Coruscant. The planet wasn't even that well-equipped to deal with refugees, as most of the population was found in towns and villages, not in metropolises, and that's the way they prefered it. It wasn't a very industrial planet either.

Lord Hartwick's estate was on the far side of the planet and it had an entire medium-sized lake to itself. The estate was made up of six buildings, each with different uses. The main building was best described as a mansion, and would likely be where Lord Hartwick himself slept. There was as second, smaller building attached to it that probably housed the servants and guards.

It was clear that Lord Hartwick was very well off. Most people who could spend ten thousand on a bounty usually were, which is why Harry's position as a bounty hunter was actually quite well suited in trying to recruit people to their cause. If they had money, they likely had an opinion on the situation, and were also likely to offer some form of support, if approached carefully. That was the long-term plan, at any rate. First, he actually had to complete the mission.

One of the smaller buildings was some sort of storage building. Harry's first impression was that it was likely used for some sort of gardening purpose, as the entire estate was filled with beautiful and very carefully cultivated gardens.

The fourth building was the hangar. It may have been the largest building on the estate by sheer volume. It was large enough to hold a dozen ships the size of the Rowena's Revenge, or maybe more. No doubt that Lord Hartwick's private luxury cruiser would be parked in there, as well as whatever speeders he used to get around on the planet itself.

The fifth building was the security building, and was at the entrance to the estate. There was a long pathway that connected the estate to other parts of the countryside, for speeder use only, and there was a fancy monogrammed gate and everything. It was very posh.

The final building was the building that Harry really cared about, and that was the museum. Harry didn't know if it was actually referred to as the museum, but that's what he called it. It's where rich folk keep their cherished works of art and significant pieces of history on display, at least the ones that weren't in the actual mansion proper, except no one gets to see it except for themselves and their staff. It's a bit narcissistic.

Harry queried the local flight control and got an automatic approval in response. Lord Hartwick must have done his due-diligence and put the Revenge on the list of approved ships. That always made things better, and Harry was thankful for the small details. Loads of times, the person hiring him often made his life as difficult as possible, as they would hire a bounty hunter yet do their moral due diligence by protesting his profession in as annoying a way as possible.

Upon coming in low, he was directed towards the hangar. The doors opened upon his arrival, revealing two large SoroSuub luxury yachts, each one a fair deal larger than the Rowena's Revenge, both in length and width. In addition, there were a handful of smaller security vessels and about fifty speeders all in a line on the far wall. All of the speeders had a different set of livery on them, as well as a number. They were probably racers of some sort, though Harry hadn't seen a track on his approach.

Parking was second nature to Harry. With the automated docking formula, Harry only had to hit a few buttons to land the ship. Such was the convenience from being on a high-tech world. More often than not, he had to do it the old fashion way on the backwater planets his bounties led him to, such as recently on Felucia. It was a convenience he tried not to get used to, in order to keep his piloting skills sharp.

Once parked, Harry turned to Aayla. "Casual gear only," he said. "We're not expecting a fight, but it's always best to be prepared. Make sure your lightsabers are covered up - we don't want to blow your cover too early."

"I understand," she said.

Harry took Aayla to the armory once more. He went over to the middle armor locker and popped open the door. The armor wasn't anything special. In fact, it looked about as non-specific and generic as they came. It was best described a long jacket, though it was a bit more than that. It was more like a cross between a cape and a robe. It wasn't anything he made himself, though he had added the customary protections that he was used to. It was a style of outerwear that people native to Pamarthe would wear. A few years back, he had voluntarily spent a couple of months on the planet and had grown accustomed to some of their traditions, and that particular jacket was one of the things he had grown to like. It was the outfit that would be most associated with him, if he were to ever be put on a poster somewhere that wasn't on Earth.

For arms, Harry opened up one of the drawers containing blaster pistols and harnesses, and handed one of each to Aayla. The blasters weren't anything special, but they didn't have to be. The harness was the type that holstered the gun on the side, rather than the hip, for freedom of movement.

"Small problem here," Aayla said after trying to harness on. "It's way too tight."

Harry turned to look at her after putting his own harness on, and immediately identified the problem. Harry was decently muscular, though he wouldn't consider himself built. It was mostly just on-the-job conditioning. The holster was adjustable to where it fit perfectly snug to him, and wouldn't bounce around or rub back and forth.

Aayla, on the other hand, was extremely fit and slender. One would think that would make the holster fit easier, but she was also quite busty, and the holster didn't sit properly upon her form.

Harry's eyes must have lingered just a few seconds too long as Aayla quickly remarked, "As you can see, I am neither male, nor human."

"Yeah, I figured that out," Harry said dryly. He took the harness back and threw it it back into the drawer and pulled out a more traditional hip holster instead. "This should work better."

The Jedi quickly looped the holster onto her leather belt, next to her offhand lightsaber. She kept one on each side of her body for easy access. "That'll work," she said. "I just hope I don't have to use it. Jedi are not trained to use blasters."

"It's easy," Harry said. "Just point and pull the trigger. There's nothing fancy about this one. We shouldn't need them, but there's no reason to announce your presence as a Jedi unless absolutely necessary. This is mostly just for appearances - an unarmed bounty hunter would be suspicious."

Aayla nodded. "I'll just go get my new cloak, and I'll be ready."

"Sure," Harry said as Aayla disappeared off into the cabin she had claimed as her own. She returned a few minutes later wearing a brand new set of leather clothes to replace her worn and burnt ones, including a new headband. It was kind of amazing that they were considered standard and traditional _conservative_ Twi'lek garments when they barely covered _anything_ , though Harry wasn't complaining too much. In addition, she had a long leather cloak of the same color that was big enough to encapsulate her whole body, covering up her lightsabers. It even had a special hood big enough to hide her lekku in.

"Will I pass as a bounty hunter?" she asked curiously.

"Nah, not enough scars," Harry said. "But as a bounty hunter's assistant? I guess we'll find out in a minute."

The last thing Harry did was take a belt with many pouches out of the armor locker and fastened it to his waist. It contained all the bits and bobs he would need for an investigation. Once that was done, he went and hit the button to open the ramp.

Already waiting for them at the bottom was Mason Lorwyn, who looked none-too-happy about his assignment. The distaste and contempt upon his face was as plain as day. Harry couldn't help but just smile in response.

"Well, let's start, shall we?" Harry said, closing the ramp behind him once Aayla joined him. "This should be fun."


	6. Chapter 6

In person, Mason Lorwyn was much taller and reedier than Harry had originally thought. Harry was pretty tall for a human, but Lorwyn had to have been nearly seven feet tall. Lorwyn both looked down on him, and _looked down_ on him. That didn't bother Harry though. He was quite used to it.

"Please, show us to where the theft occurred," Harry said diplomatically. He suspected that playing nice would ultimately not matter, but he did it anyways. It would take more than one encounter to break someone out of their preconceived notions.

Lorwyn didn't respond other than to beckon for them to follow. The path from the hangar wasn't a straight walk, as it meandered through one of the gardens. Harry wasn't actually sure what season it was on Chandrilla, but all the trees, bushes, and flowers were in full blossom. Harry recognized none of the species, as they were all native to Chandrilla, and they all had their unique beauty. They were mostly bright greens and blues with the occasion blue, and small bird-like creatures fluttered intermittently throughout.

The structure that Mason Lorwyn led them to was the one that Harry had dubbed the museum, and rightfully so. The outside reminded Harry of an ancient Roman building, though a modernized version of it. instead of stone, it was made of a dark painted metal, the same that was used for many buildings across the galaxy. All of the adornments, such as the columns and overhangs, were done simply for aesthetics rather than structural support. It was clear that Lord Hartwick had a lot of money.

Lorwyn opened the main set of double doors and ushered them inside before closing them behind them. Inside it was a bit cold, which surprised Harry. It hadn't been that hot outside, though Harry had traveled to so many different planets with different climates that he really didn't notice the temperature too much unless it was on the extreme end of either spectrum. But, he distinctly noticed that temperature had to have been at least fifty degrees colder than outside.

Harry was cold, and he at least had some warm clothes on. Aayla wasn't wearing much at all, other than her cloak. Yet, she seemed entirely unaffected by it. She was tough.

The second thing Harry noticed was that the entire building was dark. It wasn't pitch black, but the only lighting seemed to be from the exhibits themselves. It really did seem like a museum to house one man's collections. It felt sterile and lifeless. Harry didn't like it.

"Is there a reason the lights aren't on?" Harry asked.

"The light _are_ on," Mason Lorwyn said. "Some pieces of the collection are light sensitive. There security system does not require light so it is not an issue."

Clearly, Lorwyn was just as cold and sterile as the room was. Regardless, Harry took out his wand and tapped himself on the head, before pausing briefly and doing the same to Aayla. She stifled a gasp before composing herself just as quickly and continued on as if nothing had happened. He had cast darkvision on both of them, giving themselves some improved visibility in the low-light conditions.

"I get it," Harry said. "Show me where was the blaster stolen from."

Mason Lorwyn led him down the main curated hallway which, despite being quite a large room, held less than a dozen exhibits. All but three of them were broken, and transparent metal and glass were strewn all over the place. Harry wasn't terribly into art or history, so the contents of the various displays did not interest him all that much beyond their connection to Lord Hartwick and the theft.

The display case that once held the stolen blaster was tiny, or had been before it had been shattered and strewn all over the ground. The display itself was nothing more than two sets of metal prongs used to prop up the blaster, and each prong had some padding on it to not scratch it. There was a small light emitter built into the stand that highlighted the object in question. Simple stuff. The blaster, as indicated, was nowhere to be found.

"What can you tell me about the blaster?" Harry asked of the liason. "What makes it so special and valuable? Pretend that I know nothing about the history of them."

"Pretend?" Lorwyn said with a snort. "The Dylex Blaster was named for Nython Dylex, a pioneer of his field. He lived over five thousand years ago, and his work was a fusion of the even older laser-type weapons that were prevalent back then, and the common plasma-based weapons we use today."

"How does it differ from what we use today?" Harry asked.

"It uses magnetic rails to launch and control the plasma, rather than electron emitters,' Lorwyn explain. "As such, it was a much slower firing gun, but plasma had not yet been harnessed as a weaponized tool before then, at least not in a portable form. It was a huge step forward."

"Right," Harry said. "How many prototypes of this kind exist? Is it a unique piece?"

"Unique? No. Extremely rare, yes. My Lord knows of six other pistols, two of which are in public museums and the rest in private collections. Additionally, there are eight rifles, with half of them in public museums, and two cannons intended for spaceship use, both in public museums.

"Considering that there are fifty million inhabited systems, I would say that this blaster qualifies as extremely rare," Harry said.

"Indeed. It is worth noting that there is a possibility of others existing, but those are what my Lord knows of. It would be the crown jewel in many collections, so those who have them rarely keep it quiet. Though, such a proclamation requires an increase in security."

"Yet such security can be for nought when the thief is an inside man. How long did this man work for Lord Hartwick?"

"Majordomo Everett had been here for twenty years," Lorwyn replied. When he got down to business and was talking about something he had intense knowledge of, the man wasn't actually _that_ bad.

"Was the blaster in Lord Hartwick's collection before or after he arrived?" Harry asked.

"After. It was acquired slightly over seven years ago."

"So probably not a long-con then," Harry pondered. "To sit idly by for _years_ , waiting for the perfect moment? Doesn't seem likely."

"I am inclined to agree," Lorwyn said.

"Are there other kinds of prototype blasters out there?" Harry asked.

"Certainly," Lorwyn replied. "Every weapon that gets manufactured goes through the prototyping process.

"Not all of them are using experimental technology," Harry pointed out.

"That is true," Lorwyn conceded. "But there is always experimental technology being researched, even today. However, few are as historically significant as the Dylex Blaster."

"Right. How often do these come up for sale?"

"Almost never," Lorwyn said. "And it's almost always at auction. There's too much risk with a private sale. Majordomo Everett threw away twenty years of friendship and loyalty for a payday. Many men would throw away much more for much less."

"That does bring up the question of how easy it would be to sell one of these things once stolen," Harry said. "Surely, there would be a lot of interest, even at its theoretical value. But, it doesn't seem like the thing you can just take and sell on the black market without taking a huge hit. It's a hot item. It's stolen. People interested in buying one of these things will likely know that. That will deter a lot of would-be buyers."

"But not all of them," Lorwyn said.

"But not all of them," Harry echoed. "So, as I see it, that leaves two possibilities. If he stole it on a whim, that makes him a huge target. Why pay for something when you could kill a man and take it? If someone is willing to buy a stolen item, chances are they are willing to kill a man to get it, especially when its of this value. And it's just a single man, so it's an easy target. If this was merely a theft of opportunity, it wasn't a well thought out one."

"And the second possibility?" Lorwyn prompted.

"That he has a sponsor. That he has a buyer already lined up. To take such a risk without having a guaranteed payday makes little sense to me. Perhaps he shopped around for a buyer before he stole the thing. That doesn't leave a large window of time, but for an item like this, he wouldn't need much. Hell, working here for as long as he did, he probably already had a bunch of people interested in owning a priceless piece of history. You will help me get a list of those people when I am done here. That will be our starting point."

"I can do that, but what is the catalyst point? Why now, as opposed to a month ago, or a year ago? The timing makes no sense. What is the motive?"

"Good question," Harry said. "Without having met the man, I'll guess he wasn't too fond of Chancellor Palpatine crowning himself as Emperor. The holonet is in uproar over it."

"That doesn't make sense," Lorwyn said. "My Lord is none-too-fond of the proclamation either. Very few on Chandrilla are. But, it's not like we are marching down the streets in protest. Many are waiting to see how things play out, and more than a few are optimistic. This knee-jerk reaction does not remind me of the Everett I've known for so long."

"We'll find out one way or another," Harry said. Leaning down near the broken display case, Harry carefully took a piece of sterile cloth out of a pouch and picked up one of the shards of glass. Aayla leaned in close to watch Harry as he worked.

The shard from the case was quite thick. It only took a glance to see that it was transparisteel, which was the same material used to make starfighter canopies and the like. It could resist light blaster fire quite easily, and there was no way any sort of hand tool could get through it.

"What's on the property that can break through transparisteel?" Harry asked. "Can't really blast or hack your way through this stuff. Breaking through this would need some planning."

"We have a tool shed, but all the tools are still in their places," Lorwyn said. "It was one of the first things we checked. I doubt he would take a construction cutter, use it, and then return it."

"And the security vids show nothing?"

"He knew how to disable them," Lorwyn said. "He _did_ work here for twenty years after all.

"Fair enough," Harry said. He took a moment to calm himself, and reached out with his senses. Legilimency was not something he threw around for fun, as there could be some severe side effects depending on the target species. Even some humans could be quite resistant, and no one took kindly to mental intruders.

Harry did not think the man was involved, despite his disposition, and a quick peak confirmed that. Using legilimency wasn't like reading a book. It was more akin to deciphering emotions. Lorwyn was very plain-faced. There was a deep seated feeling of distrust, which Harry attributed to offworlders. There was a feeling of loathing tied to that as well, which Harry attributed to himself being the cause. The man likely didn't like bringing in outside help to do a job he felt could be handled internally. Furthermore, there was a feeling of extreme hatred, more than Harry was expecting, again centered on himself. Harry knew he hadn't ever done anything to the man, so Harry got the sense that something personal had happened to him involving a bounty hunter in the past.

None of that surprised really Harry. He didn't really need to legilimency to figure that out, as it was written all over his face. What he did learn was that Lorwyn was not personally involved, and quite truthful about knowing nothing about the crime other than what was mentioned. Still, Harry was at a loss. All he could do was to continue to look for clues elsewhere. Knowing how Everett broke into the security displays would go a long way in knowing his motivation.

Aayla took the cloth-wrapped shard from Harry and inspected it with her own eyes. Carefully, she turned it over in her head, examining the edge. "I think I have an answer," she said. "I've seen this kind of damage before."

"Oh?" Harry asked.

"This was done with a lightsaber," she declared. "It can cut cleanly true enough, but the heat it puts off can turn transparisteel brittle, causing it to fracture like this. I'm sure of it."

"That's Interesting," Harry said. "Good job." He turned to Lorwyn. "I don't suppose a lightsaber was stolen from here as well?"

"There _is_ a lightsaber here," Lorwyn confirmed. "But it was not stolen. In fact, it's still in its case."

"Really? Show me."

The case with the lightsaber was all the way on the far wall of the museum, quite a distance from where the Dylex blaster had been. Like the other displays, it had its own lighting, and as described, the case did not look like it had been broken in too, nor did the displays on either side of it.

Inside the case was a single lightsaber. It was slightly on the smaller side, and was of the traditional silvery metal casing with grips attached. Harry didn't actually know what they were made of, but it looked pretty normal.

"Whose is it?" Harry asked. "Anyone living?"

"The Jedi who owned it died over one hundred and twenty years ago. He was a Mirilian who went by the name Turlov Jaageniro."

"Never heard of him," Harry said.

"Nor I," Aayla added.

"I don't know much of his history, only that he had died at the hands of a bounty hunter hired in revenge. The bounty hunter kept the lightsaber as a trophy for many years until he too met his end. Eventually, it ended up in Lord Hartwick's collection."

Reaching into another pouch, Harry pulled out two pairs of disposable medical gloves. He handed one pair to Aayla while he put the other on and began to inspect the display case. It was no use looking for clues if he was going to contaminate the evidence with his own presence, so it was always best to be prepared.

Leaning in closer to the display case, Harry ran a hand down the corner edge, feeling for flaws. Nothing seemed amiss at first, even when he tapped on it. It was quite sturdy, and in one piece. No one had tampered with it, at least not obviously.

But then, on a hunch, Harry grabbed both sides of the case and simply lifted. To everyone's surprise, the case lifted up freely.

Harry set the display case off to the side. "Well, who needs to break in when you can just take the top off?" Harry stated.

Leaning in once more, Harry inspected the inner seam of the case, where the case sat up against the ledge. There was some sort of electrical locking mechanism, maybe magnetic, maybe not. Whatever it was, the mechanism seemed ever so slightly bent. Clearly it was enough to open the case without triggering an alarm or anything.

"When was the last time on record that this case was opened?" Harry asked.

Lorwyn blinked owlishly for a moment before reaching for his datapad. He scrolled threw a few options before finding the information he was looking for. "On record, two months ago for routine maintenance."

"Who signed off on it?" Harry asked.

"The majordomo," Lorwyn replied. "He signs off on all maintenance."

"So, the majordomo has a lot of access," Harry mused. "Enough to bypass security, and possible knowledge of a faulty display case. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we're not going to find any evidence of him contacting anyone outside of the norm. He would have covered his tracks. So, we won't be able to find who it is directly. But, with this type of item, I am willing to hedge that he would still need to have some prior knowledge of potential clients. That list is going to be more important now."

"I will forward it to your ship," Lorwyn said. "Lord Hartwick has had many dealings over the years, so the list is quite extensive."

"I'm sure not everyone on that list will be able to afford such an item," Harry said.

"That is true. But some of those people might know someone who does. Who's to say who is a middleman and who isn't?"

"Everyone is a middleman in some fashion, just not everyone knows it," Harry said after a moment of contemplation. He turned to Aayla. "What can you tell me about the lightsaber? Maybe there's a clue."

With careful glove-covered fingers, Aayla plucked up the lightsaber off the cushion it was resting on and brought it up to her eye level. "It's old," she said. "The story could be true. But, it feels too light. Lightsabers, despite the name, tend to be pretty hefty. There's a lot that goes into the construction of one."

"Is there anyway to see when the last time it was used?"

Aayla shook her head a she carefully examined the button on the lightsaber. "Most lightsabers are designed so that the blade only remains lit when the button is depressed. But, conventional design also has a back-straddling latch that can be toggled using the Force to keep the blade on, if the user is proficient in the saber-throw technique. This lightsaber seems to be missing it."

"Is that common?"

"No," Aayla replied. "Pretty rare, in fact. I don't know why anyone wouldn't have it, since it's a technique that can be learned by anyone. Though, I wonder…"

Aayla delicately fiddled with the topmost half of the cylinder, the part above the button and near where the emitter was. With a deft twist, the cylinder clicked and popped open. She took once glance at the insides before declaring, "It's empty."

"What do you mean?" Mason Lorwyn asked.

"I mean, it's a fake."

"It can't be," Lorwyn said. "I've seen it working before."

" _This_ one isn't doing anything," Aayla said. "The thief must have taken the real one and swapped it out with this fake. And, the thief must have used the real one to break into the other cases."

"So it _was_ premeditated then?" Lorwyn asked.

"One thing doesn't necessarily lead to the other," Harry said. "We don't know when the lightsaber was stolen. That could have happened months ago. Perhaps Everett is a Force-wielder, or hired someone who owned a lightsaber to help with the break in.

Harry paused a moment to collect his thoughts. Then, he turned to Aayla. "How rare do you think lightsabers are?"

"If you asked that question a week ago, I'd have a different answer," Aayla said. "There were over ten-thousand active Jedi, each with a lightsaber, some with more than one. That number never fluctuated too much. However, most lightsabers are retrieved when their owner's fall, though some small number fell into their slayers hands as trophies. General Grievous had _at least_ four."

"I _have_ seen other bounty hunters with them," Harry said. He mulled over the new bit of data for a moment before continuing his thought. "Rare, but not ultra-rare then. Still, it leaves me to wonder. Did Hartwick purchase a fake? Did Everett know it was a fake? Or was it real, and Everett swapped it with a fake one to conceal its use in the crime? If the swap happened two months ago, then the whole situation with the Emperor is just an excuse to put the crime into motion."

Harry paused again to think over the situation and Aayla chimed in with her thoughts. "This lightsaber might not have anything to do with this at all. It could be a completely different lightsaber. They're rare, but they are available on the black market."

"That's possible," Harry said. "Still… he stole many other items from here, why bother covering _how_ the crime was committed when you know _who_ committed it? Perhaps there's a motive in the exact items he stole. Why don't you show me the others?"

"As you wish," Mason Lorwyn said. He led them off to the nearest damaged exhibit. "Here was the necklace of Mikala Muon, 16th Empress of Duro."

Lorwyn pulled up a picture of the necklace on his holo display. It was quite extravagant, and must have weighed several pounds. It was definitely the type of piece an empress would wear, though Harry thought it was more gaudy than pretty.

"How long ago did she live?"

"She lived over a thousand years ago," Lorwyn replied.

"Geeze, and how did such an artifact come about to be owned by a random lord on a human world?"

"The same way any item does," Lorwyn said with a sneer. "With money. A thousand years is a lot of time for an object to travel."

"Fair point," Harry conceded. "Alright, what else was stolen?"

"Over here was the coronation scepter of Hern the Horrible, conqueror of Ithor," Lorwyn said. "The Ithorians are known as a peaceful species, but there are exceptions to every rule, and Hern was the worst of his kind. The scepter was stained with blood from where he had used to to crush his brother's skull an hour into his coronation feast. Hern did not tolerate any claimants to his throne."

"Gruesome," Harry said. "What else?'

Lorwyn lead him over to the next broken display and repeated the process. At each display case, Harry inspected the damaged pieces, finding the same lightsaber-damaged material. "The False Mirror of Malastare, which is said to have been imbued with an evil power by a Sith long forgotten to time. The legend says that any who look upon the mirror will instantly age ten years, though I don't believe that rumor since it has been displayed here and elsewhere for decades with no ill effect.

"A curious artifact with a dark past," Harry said. "It could have been true at one point, but such things tend to fade with time, just as that Sith's name."

"Could be," Lorwyn said dismissively.

Harry took his time inspecting the display case. It was a larger one, as the mirror had been huge. The picture that Lorwyn showed them didn't really do it justice. Stealing it would not have been an easy feat.

While the display case was shattered over the floor, Harry noticed that on this particular one, it wasn't a terrible clean job, as if Everett had been particularly worried with accidentally damaging the piece inside. Pieces of the transparisteel were still attached to the pedestal itself, and upon examination, Harry noticed blood on one of the edges.

"Perfect," Harry said. He took out another piece of cloth out and carefully dabbed the blood with it. He showed it to both Aayla and Lorwyn. "Looks like our man might have cut himself trying to knock the damaged transparisteel off. His blood could be useful."

"How so?" Lorwyn asked. Aayla looked curious as well.

"Well, I'll have the droid on my ship run it to see what kind of blood it actually is. You can tell a lot about a man from his blood. Stress levels and things like that. Perhaps there's something in his blood that will tell us of his motivation, or whether he was in a rush or under duress. A disease, perhaps. And, if it is actually Everett's, when we capture him, we'll be able to get a positive ID, even if he's altered his appearance. You can change your face, but you can't change your blood."

"At least that's something," Lorwyn muttered. "Lord Hartwick will be pleased that Everett has left proof of his crime."

"If it's actually Everett's," Harry corrected. He folded the bloody cloth up and tucked it away. For all Harry knew, the blood could have been planted there in some sort of elaborate trap. He would find the truth. There was plenty more that could be done with the blood than just having a droid run a diagnosis. "We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. I'll follow this lead to wherever it takes me, and that might not even be Everett."

"That is prudent of you," Lorwyn commented idly. "Shall we go to the next item?"

"Please," Harry said.

Lorwyn led them over to the next display case, which was just as smashed as all the previous ones, except for the blood. "The item that was here may be one your associate is aware of," he said. "The Bracers of the Warrior-Princess Uirim'noji."

"They were a symbol of her dynasty," Aayla said. "They disappeared when slavers looted the entire village and kidnapped everyone there. Sadly, there's been so many slaver runs on Ryloth that one is barely any more notable than the other."

"Interesting," Harry said. "Aside from some monetary value, I'm not sure why anyone would steal them, yet leave others behind. That mirror couldn't have been easy to move, so why take it? Now, how many more items were stolen?"

"Seventeen more," Lorwyn said.

Harry sighed. It appeared he would actually be doing a lot of work for this bounty.

435345345

It was nearly two hours later when Mason Lorwyn had finished going over the final item that had been stolen. There had been far too many of them for Harry to give any particular one any attention, and he was sure he had already forgotten half of them. He'd have to consult the lists that Lorywn would send containing Lord Hardwick's notable clients, as well as a list of all the items stolen and the ones not stolen. There was a lot of data that he needed to go over.

"Alright, I've seen enough here," Harry said at last. He was doing his best to not show his boredom, though Aayla hid it better than he did. She, for her part, at least pretended to be interested. "There's one last thing I want to see here before I examine and evaluate the evidence. I'd like to see where Everett was sleeping."

"His lodgings?" Lorwyn repeated. "If you insist. I doubt you will find anything there, but at least I can tell my Lord that you were thorough, if nothing else."

"Great," Harry drawled. "Show us the way, if you would."

Upon exiting the museum, Harry felt like he would burst into flames. They had been inside the museum for so long that Harry had almost gotten used to the sterile coldness. Aayla, who had started to shiver slightly despite her extensive training, relaxed ever-so-slightly upon feeling the new warmth wash over her. It didn't matter how much training someone had - when standing in near freezing temperatures for several hours while wearing clothing that was at most slightly less revealing than a swimsuit, the effects would be felt.

They were brought through another colorful garden with a multitude of gentle insects flying around. The smell was quite pleasant, though one always had to take care when around foreign species. Chandrilla may be a human world, but ecosystem was as foreign to him as Felucia's.

Going through a side entrance, Mason Lorwyn bypassed the majority of mansion proper and took them straight to the staff quarters. Majordomo Everett, despite being the highest ranked member of staff who wasn't Lord Hardwick himself, slept in the staff quarters like everyone else, albeit with his own private room.

What small part of the mansion that Harry did get to see was impressive, but not overly so. There's only so many times one could see overly-extravagant wealth without getting tired of the whole facade. He lived in a spaceship cabin that was eight by ten feet without the use of expansion charms, and that was enough for him. All the stone statues and gold dinner sets meant nothing to him when he had the infinite vastness of space as his home. He wouldn't give that up for a _billion_ credits.

Everett's room was posh, and intentionally so. So much that it actually stuck out a bit, as if he tried _too_ hard to fit in. Like, there was an expensive tapestry hanging up, but the single blanket on the bed was practically threadbare, and the construction of the various pieces of furniture were acceptable at best, but since there was a fancy crystal vase on top, few people noticed.

"What are we looking for?" Aayla asked.

"We're just seeing if anything is out of place," Harry said. "He doesn't appear to have left in a hurry. The bed is made, all the doors on the storage compartments are closed all the way. Plenty of clothes and personal belongings are still here. I'd say that he knew what he was doing well ahead of time, just based on what I'm seeing here, and he was just waiting for the right moment to do it."

Truthfully, there wasn't anything particular he was looking for. There were no secret messages, no hidden weapons, nothing that would incriminate Everett of any crime whatsoever. Subtle use of his magic revealed nothing as well. Everything was clean, but lived in. It was unexciting, to say the least. Hardly the den of a deranged criminal mastermind with an agenda.

"I've seen enough," Harry said after a few minutes. Aayla had turned up as much as he did, which was nothing. "I have one last question though - how did he escape? All the items he took would have taken more than a single trip."

"He took a speeder into the city," Lorwyn said. "There are thousands of transports in and out every day, so it's impossible to tell which one he took."

"The holovid showed nothing?" Harry asked.

"Acquiring the holovid from a city could take weeks," Lorwyn replied. "Hence, Lord Hartwick is looking for a resolution quicker than that. Though, if you fail in your task, that is one of the options he could pursue."

"That's not the only reason Lord Hartwick hired me, is it?" Harry asked suspiciously. "I don't like being played false, and I feel like there's something going on that I'm not aware of. You have your own security force here. I bet the speeders here all have trackers of some sort. Lord Hartwick is very influential and very wealthy. Why hire a bounty hunter? We don't typically do detective work."

"You've got it exactly right," Lorwyn said. "The only missing piece is your lack of understanding of the social climate here. Lord Hartwick is wealthy and influential _because_ of _how_ he does business. What do you think will happen if word gets out that his own majordomo stole half of his collection and escaped with barely a trace? His peers would think that he wouldn't be able to run a household. And, if he can't run his own household, how could he be expected to do business? If any of his peers so much as caught wind of what happened here, his reputation would be ruined. That's why he sought to hire a bounty hunter like you, someone with no connection to this planet at all. A bounty hunter could be here for any number of reasons. Need I say more?"

"Ah, I think I understand now," Harry said with a long drawn-out sigh. "It's not so much _what_ was stolen, more the fact that something was stolen at all. No worries, I can be discrete. Well, I'm going to deliberate for a bit on what I've seen with the information you've sent to me. I'll report my findings in a few hours. I would be much appreciative if you lead us back to my ship."

"So be it," Lorwyn said. "If you don't have something in a few hours, my Lord will be most disappointed."

"I'll keep that in mind," Harry replied.


End file.
